“Paranormal Activity” at the August Wilson Theatre (Photo: Matthew Murphy)

Just in time for spooky season, Levi Holloway’s jump scare-athon Paranormal Activity is now tingling spines on Broadway after a national tour and several engagements in the UK. Based on Oren Peli’s 2007 horror film, the stage version, by necessity, dispenses with most of what makes Peli’s movie great and becomes, instead, a lifesize dollhouse for the audience to watch a couple be tormented by special effects.

Peli’s film is a masterpiece of found footage horror. The whole premise of the Paranormal Activity franchise is that we’re observing the hauntings through video recordings. In the original, it’s primarily a camcorder set up to capture the titular activities while the central couple is sleeping. In later films, there’s a pivot toward home security cameras and baby monitors. On screen, the entire crux of what makes Paranormal Activity unique is the video. We see things happen to the characters when their eyes are closed or their backs are turned and the only reason we’re watching it now is because something terrible has happened and we’re reviewing the footage.

But that’s not where theatre hits, despite video’s extensive intrusion elsewhere. When I saw Paranormal Activity in London, there were tiny cameras positioned in the corners of rooms and a video feed would pop up, in night vision, on monitors in the audience to capture certain, shall we say, developments. It was a nice bridge between the film and stage versions, nodding slightly to the surveillance aspect, even if it was just a practical solution to sightline issues. 

There’s no video here, aside from what’s played on a bizarrely placed television screen. The level of explicit voyeurism is removed and replaced with the implicit voyeurism of the theatre. But that also removes a level of seriousness. Found footage horror can often have higher stakes than something more straightforwardly narrative. We buy into the idea that it’s real in a way we wouldn’t otherwise. There’s no “it’s just a movie” with found footage. On stage, it is just a play. They are just actors. They’re gonna bow any minute now and we’re gonna clap. 

So, in floats a cloud of corniness that is unavoidable. As the audience screams in terror, shouts at the characters, and spills their drinks when startled by loud noises, it’s so silly, but also incredibly fun. Every one of those reactions is immediately followed by raucous laughter. We all know we’re being ridiculous. That’s what we came for. Would this be a perfect show for Las Vegas? Absolutely. 

Holloway almost certainly got this job after the Broadway run of his horror play Grey House in 2023. While they are tonally quite different, Paranormal Activity shares some DNA with its sibling, particularly – no spoilers – in its denouement. Most of the dialogue is innocuous exposition, just setting us up for the scares, but there is one scene at the climax where the two main characters have a real conversation that leads to a major revelation. The excellent Cher Álvarez and Travis A. Knight spend most of the play talking about how scared they are and creeping around the house, but in this final scene, both actors lock in to each other and deliver a quiet, still, palpably tense and emotional scene. 

Felix Barrett directs with a stylish moodiness, so key in his former work on Sleep No More and here, too. Scenic designer Fly Davis slices a London townhome in half, exposing its contents to the audience and concealing whatever lurks outside. Lighting designer Anna Watson is able to turn these interior rooms into a house of horrors, externalizing the inner anguish of the central couple. As the play tells us right at the top, “Places aren’t haunted, people are.”

The success of the play rides or dies on the quality of its illusions and its sound design and both Chris Fisher and Gareth Fry, respectively, nail their assignments. Fisher cooks up some chilling images that are wildly inventive and believable, even sitting very close to the stage. Fry’s sound design is perfectly timed to the twists and turns of Holloway’s writing and Fisher’s illusions, and the continual thrum underscoring the play is deliciously unnerving. 

A minor quibble, though, and a warning: I have now seen this play twice, both in the West End and on Broadway, and both times have missed what, I assume, are big moments due to where I was sitting. The second floor of Davis’ set features a room pushed back at the rear of the stage and I was unable to see most of what took place in there from both the mid-center of the stalls in London and the front of the orchestra on Broadway. The nature of this play and its design almost begs you to sit in the front mezzanine to take in the full scope of the house. Maybe I’ll have to go back, to be startled and delighted again, and to confirm the view.