‘Paranormal Activity’ Play Review: Literal Jump Scares Abound
Paranormal Activity: A New Story Live On Stage starts with a command. Close your eyes. See the “echo of an image” burned into your brain. Breathe in, breathe out — and accept the fact places aren’t haunted. People are.
In pitch-black darkness, we hear the medium walk us through the first steps of a seance. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, the stage slowly reveals a set that somehow gets to the heart of what makes found footage terrifying.
Levi Holloway’s Paranormal Activity play — which came over from London and has stopped in Los Angeles, Chicago, and now Washington, D.C., thanks to Shakespeare Theatre Company— will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
The play is based on the 2007 film and its subsequent sequels, but the story is completely original. And while it isn’t told through screen recordings or digicam footage, Paranormal Activity achieves that forbidden, voyeuristic feeling by telling us this haunting story through the cross-section of the unlucky couple’s house.
Meet Lou (Cher Álvarez) and James (Travis A. Knight), who fled their life in Chicago for a fresh start in England. The first bit of Paranormal Activity feels like a sexy little romcom, naturally giving us seasoned horror fans a feeling of immense dread.
By bits and pieces, we get that texture that tells us more about who James and Lou are as people: they’re sweet, silly, and sarcastic, and driven to work hard despite their life in transition. They desperately want to make this new life in England comfortable and safe, despite being so far from home.
And yet, the past haunts them, seeping into the cozy little life James and Lou are desperate to create. As paranormal activity kicks up in their new home, you see how the dire circumstances set flame to this image of a cute couple embracing this new chapter together.
As a horror fan, you’re torn– is this the classic trope of the haunted house stoking marital discord? Or is there something dark clinging to Lou, which makes a normal relationship untenable?
As James and Lou bicker, doors that open and close on their own — or smart TVs that turn on and off by themselves — are light work. Horrifying enough is the way James gaslights Lou, blaming her inkling that something is wrong on her recent mental illness diagnosis.
You could hear every woman in the audience groan when James asked Lou if she had taken her meds today. I’m convinced that watching Paranormal Activity as a play, especially as a fly on the wall in a literal, two-story house, made the dramatic irony that much richer.
It made you that much angrier that James wasn’t believing Lou, because, as an audience member, you could see all the ways that the house was alive with dark energy. Much like seeing any horror movie in theaters, especially on opening night, seeing the Paranormal Activity play was rewarding because you got to live the story in real time with the people in the seat next to you.
You all chuckled when James put on Motown records to bring romance back to this haunted space. You all sucked your teeth when his mom, like many in-laws before him, royally messed up her delivery when expressing concern for Lou’s mental health. You all breathed in and out when the medium asked you to. And you all screamed when that moment happened, when the paranormal activity manifested in a way that finally made James start believing Lou.
Shortly after it happened, it was time for intermission. I turned to my friend [Dread Central’s former editor-in-chief, Mary Beth McAndrews, who is writing a book about Paranormal Activity, by the way] and told her I needed a beverage. When I got up, my legs felt like jelly.
Outside, the lobby buzzed with electricity, but I could also tell from everyone’s faces that we were all glad for a breather. It was just the same when the play ended, with dozens of people lingering to debrief.
When I got home, I was too riled up to go to sleep, but eventually my mind stopped racing. I thought I was OK…
Until I got up to get a midnight snack, saw the silhouette of my bag against the glass door, and felt all the breath leave my body in a violent shudder. I sent a voice note to my best friend, who can only watch horror through her fingers, and asked, “Is this how normal people feel when they watch a horror movie?”
If you’re a hardcore horror fan looking for something that makes you feel like you’re 5 years old watching a classic slasher again — or a teenager sneaking a bootleg of that 2007 found footage flick — Paranormal Activity: A New Story Live On Stage is right on the money.
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