The stage version performs on an intimate and domestic scale yet delivers more thrills, chills and screams than Broadway has seen in years. Taking the spirit of the “Paranormal Activity” films and turning it into a scare-‘em stage experience could have been a terrifying trip for its creators, too. After all, horror isn’t exactly a Broadway staple and producers have mostly given up that particular ghost.
But the franchise — Oren Peli’s indie film was originally shot in 2006 for $15,000 and brought in almost $200 million — comes with its own young evergreen fan base. (An eighth film is set for next year.) Following the stage show’s 2024 premiere in England and subsequent stops in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Toronto and Boston, it now makes its Broadway bow for a limited run. But will it succeed where others have failed? Well, stranger things have happened.
The stage version of “Paranormal Activity” performs on an intimate and domestic scale yet delivers more thrills, chills and screams than Broadway has seen in years, and giving the franchise a legit afterlife. The fresh element is that it’s live theater, without benefit of cutaways, close-ups or tracking shots. Yes, it’s only a play but the stakes feel higher when everything in front of us is all too real.
The original film told its story with only found footage — camcorders, security cameras — giving viewers a voyeuristic thrill. On stage, the audience is the camera, peering into a cutaway of set designer Fly Davis’ ominous, two-story house, lit with foreboding foreshadowing by Anna Watson. Instead of the movie’s single, confined perspective, theatergoers take in all the rooms of this haunted house simultaneously, seeing dread lurking everywhere.
Scripter Levi Holloway — who struck out with Broadway’s” Grey House” in 2023 — returns to the horror genre, evoking the mysterious and shadowy feel of the films. He creates two new appealing lead characters, not unlike its original movie’s young married pair. Lou (Cher Álvarez) is still deeply affected from an earlier paranormal trauma while husband James (Travis A.
Knight) is skeptical-but-supportive. They have moved from Chicago to London hoping that a geographical change would help. As we are reminded: “Places aren’t haunted.
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