There’s something primal about gathering together in a darkened space to have skilled storytellers scare the bejesus out of you. Paranormal Activity, a new Broadway spectacle based on the 20-year-old film franchise, delivers enough goosebumps and sudden jolts that you’ll want to check under the bed when you get home before resting your head on the pillow. Horror fans will delight in how live theater can produce the same kind of scream-at-the-screen pleasures of watching a slasher flick at the multiplex.
Levi Holloway, who made his Broadway debut three years ago with the Tatiana Maslany-Laurie Metcalf haunted-house drama Grey House, creates a new story that’s rooted in the mythology of Paramount’s onscreen franchise. A young American couple has moved into a new house in London (where this play was originally mounted) and encounters all manner of unsettling developments: slammed doors, loud noises out of nowhere, TVs that suddenly turn on and off. As in the first film, we learn that ghosts don’t haunt a place but a person. The young wife, Lou (Cher Álvarez), has had a history of unexplained encounters with a shadowy presence since she was a girl and escaped a house fire that killed her parents. She also experienced episodes of “lost time” in their previous home in Chicago, events that led her to take enough psych meds to sow doubts in her ever-skeptical husband, James (Travis A. Knight), when strange things start happening again.
But the couple’s hopes to start fresh in a new country are upended from the jump. Or should I say, from the jump scare? There are plenty of those here, sometimes accompanied by high-volume sound effects (by Gareth Fry) and blaring bursts of Nirvana tunes like “Lithium.” Costume and scenic designer Fly Davis has concocted a wonderfully detailed two-story dollhouse of a set, cleverly lit by Anna Watson, with an open-plan downstairs and an upper level featuring a bedroom, bathroom, and the door to a spare room that the pair over-optimistically dub the nursery.
That room becomes ground zero for the hauntings, which are rendered with great skill by illusion designer Chris Fisher and projection designer Luke Halls. Shadows cross along walls, sometimes slowly and sometimes at great speed. A blanket is pulled down from the sleeping couple on the downstairs sofa by an unseen hand. Figures pop up only to disappear again. There’s a great deal of stagecraft here, and skilled misdirection, that keeps both the central couple and us on edge.
There’s also a good deal of FOMO for an audience that must keep an eye on the shadowy corners of a vast Broadway stage instead of having our focus narrowed by a skilled cinematographer to a narrower screen image. Seat selection plays a big role in your ability to catch all the creepy details. The best seats are in the center orchestra section, preferably at least eight rows back from the stage (so you don’t have to crane your neck to see the upstairs), or the mezzanine section. Too far to the side and you’re liable to miss some key details. And those seated in the last rows of orchestra may miss aspects of the upper deck, while balcony seats may cut off the kitchen TV screen where James holds FaceTime chats his hyper-religious mom (Shannon Cochran) and where quick-cut montages mysteriously appear. (I loved the inclusion of a fortuitously apt episode of the British quiz show Countdown in one key scene, where contestants built words from nine randomly selected Scrabble-tile letters; first, it’s MANGER, then HARMING, before the nine-letter winner emerges: NIGHTMARE.)
I admit I missed a few of the onstage reveals, though I felt the effect even if I lacked specific knowledge of the particulars. You may find yourself turning to your companion (or overhearing a neighbor) to learn what just happened in some corner of the stage where you weren’t looking. Rest assured, the key horror manifestations occur center stage — and they pack a powerful punch. Paranormal Activity is genuinely scary without resorting to the graphic violence of recent horror plays like Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
Of course, there’s an irony built into staging such elaborate, effects-driven horror on Broadway. The original Paranormal Activity, an exercise in found-footage storytelling built around the camcorder tapes of a husband trying to document his wife’s otherworldly hauntings, cost a mere $15,000 to shoot — and then earned a whopping $193 million at the box office worldwide. Producing cheap thrills on Broadway requires considerably more capital.
Holloway’s script excavates many familiar tropes of the genre. The shower whose curtain is almost always closed. The souvenir bell from Arthur Conan Doyle’s flirtation with spiritualism that gets a callback before the final curtain. The expert medium (Eva Kaminsky), now a podcaster naturally, who visits Lou and James with her ghost-detecting gadgetry before concluding that this couple’s haunting is beyond her abilities. The script follows key elements of the original film while producing some genuine twists. As with many genre stories, though, it’s best not to dwell too long on the logic of it all.
Where this show truly succeeds is in re-creating the communal feeling of being in a crowded theater for a horror film, with the added benefit of having both a live audience as well as performers who feed off all that pumped-up nervous energy. In many ways, the vibe in the theater feels like an extension of interactive theater pieces like Sleep No More, which was also directed by Felix Barrett. Neither show is a passive viewing experience.
Credit for that level of engagement goes to Álvarez and Knight, who convincingly portray millennials who are very much in love but not always capable of expressing empathy when the stresses build. James’s initial doubts, his desire to rationalize what Lou relates (could these visions be carbon monoxide poisoning from leaving the gas stove on?), register as genuine ways to grapple with the inexplicable. Álvarez, meanwhile, conveys an overriding dread that’s made more difficult by her partner’s impulse to discount or dismiss her lived experience. They give performances of understated honesty that help to compensate for some of the horror-movie stupidity of their later actions. You may be tempted to shout: For the love of God, don’t open the door!
But by the time that thought occurs to you, it will be too late. Paranormal Activity will have crept into your bloodstream like some unearthly virus, and you’re unlikely to shake that sense of dread anytime soon. You won’t dare sleep until you’ve checked under the bed thoroughly. ★★★★☆
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY
August Wilson Theatre, Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through January 3 for $63 to $363