Which operating system do you use and which version of AM and this theme?
2.2.1 and 2.6.3 respectively. Eh, this is hardly the only thing that has confounded me but ultimately provided a sort of workaround. I can't get AttractMode to recognize filters unless I specifically define them under the "global filter", so I don't know what the purpose of the followup filters might be. Doesn't matter since ultimately I got a solution. And in the case of this theme, well, disabling the text list (or the other way around) just about kills the menu chug, even with videos playing. That could change if I ever get higher quality videos, but then I guess I could stick with the text list only. (Need to do something about the font so I can see the full names, though.)
One thing I haven't sorted out is why AttractMode's rom sorter generates a text file with two parts: The Mame games with their correct titles (about 90% of the list), plus a further 10% that are duplicate entries but lacking title information. In AttractMode, this results in a list that shows titles A-to-Z, followed by another list showing rom names instead of titles. I suppose the "solution" here would be to manually delete the title-less entries AttractMode generates, but I consider this symptomatic of an overall flakiness in the app that I guess I'll always be working around.