After seven movies, the “Paranormal Activity” franchise doesn’t frighten audiences the way it once did — that is, through the power of suggestion, using home security cameras, smartphones and webcams to “capture” ghostly phenomena in seemingly innocuous suburban locations. While audiences have gotten wise to the films’ found-footage approach, the name still means something. That’s why it now comes attached to a thinly connected but thoroughly effective haunted-house show from “Sleep No More” director Felix Barrett, presented not as a play, but as “a new story live on stage.”
First attempted in Leeds, England, and now making appearances on various American stages (Chicago’s Shakespeare Theater last month, Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theater this November, followed by stops by D.C. and San Francisco in early 2026), “Paranormal Activity” goes to show that the series hasn’t given up the ghost. Instead, it was time to reinvent — and what better way to do that than by conjuring ghosts in front of a live audience? As with cinema, the impact relies on clever illusions, but in this age of CG and AI, it’s a lot more satisfying to be fooled in the flesh, and “Paranormal Activity” has audiences crying out in fright and surprise.
What is lost in the process are the other core elements of live theater: namely, a decent piece of drama, with well-rounded characters, witty dialogue (typically elevated beyond the banal utterances of everyday discourse) and something topical to impart about the world we live in. “Paranormal Activity” is thin to the point of tedium, focused on a couple who’ve moved from Chicago to England (why England?), hoping for a fresh start, only to find themselves in a dauntingly large two-story house seemingly possessed by evil spirits.
The husband James (Patrick Heusinger) is the skeptical type, and though strange things happen — knocking sounds that might be the pipes and power outages that require tense walks through near-darkness to reset the fuses — he chalks it up to the old home. Meanwhile, his wife Lou (Cher Álvarez) feels like she’s losing her mind. The disturbances feel much more vivid to her, and can’t be denied.
The couple has been married for one year, and they’re still figuring things out. Phoning in by FaceTime, Lou’s mother-in-law (Shannon Cochran, visible on a flatscreen TV to the left of the front door) suggests that she is psychotic, but what’s really driving Lou crazy is not being believed. Well, that and a secret that will be revealed much later.
One could argue that “Paranormal Activity” deals with the basic adjustment stresses of any young couple learning to live together. But I tend to be frustrated with movies that are “about what they are about” — that is, where the film’s theme is also its plot, instead of being treated as subtext — and this play has that same problem: Practically the only thing these two talk about is whether the place is haunted, when writer Levi Holloway (who’s also credited with the “restaging”) could have written something a little more substantial and then complicated it with ghosts, à la “Rebecca” or “What Lies Beneath.”
But “Paranormal Activity” was never an especially profound piece of IP to begin with, and Holloway’s essentially starting from scratch, with none of the films’ characters — not even Tobi, the demonic entity they have to contend with — so much as mentioned here. This is a “new story” with the Blumhouse-backed franchise’s name slapped on it, after all, and that serves its purpose: The Ahmanson previously experimented with horror on stage, mounting “2:22 A Ghost Story” in 2022, and that play relied on a starry cast (that included Anna Camp and Constance Wu) to lure folks in. The “Paranormal Activity” brand does that here, even if many in attendance haven’t seen a single one of the films.
As a sidenote, both productions originated in England, where there appears to be something of a trend among horror plays — which is either a desperate ploy to draw in a fresh demographic to the post-pandemic stage or an inspired response to productions like “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which wowed crowds with simulated “magic” (the man responsible, Chris Fisher, also developed the illusions for “Paranormal Activity”). It should be said that this show is far more effective than “2:22,” which used an obnoxious strategy of blinding audiences with an incredibly bright light that framed the stage.
“Paranormal Activity” opens with a burst of deafening music, which serves to put us on edge, but the subsequent jolts are well-earned and unexpected enough to pay off that tension. Divided into two halves, with scenes that abruptly “cut” to black (as if to punctuate the preceding shock), the play teases us with sinister possibility: James and Lou’s house occupies the entire stage, with a large common area below and stairs that lead up to a creepy closet, bedroom and loo above. The most startling illusion in the first act may be the sight of James urinating with the bathroom door open — though it’s what happens with the bathrobe that audiences will never forget.
With just two characters more or less “alone” on such a big stage (plus a charlatan spiritualist, played by Kate Fry in one scene), we instinctively scan the murky corners for potential threats. Special mention to lighting designer Anna Watson, who conjures dread from the darkness and casts a shadow at the top of the second act that confirms Lou isn’t crazy. Hence her use of the word “gaslighting” (incorrectly, as usual, though it still gets a big laugh).
Without spoiling any more surprises, rest assured the show is less of a tease than the movies that inspired it — which is to say, it delivers on the promise of the house being haunted. In a smart touch, Holloway ties the explanation for the paranormal activity back to his characters’ pasts, rather than making it a symptom of generations-earlier trauma in the same location (and therefore unrelated to the living), the way most ghost stories work. A few times, James steps outside, which introduces a nerve-racking sense of exposure. The mere insinuation of horror may have been scary in the “Paranormal Activity” movies, but when it comes to the play, seeing is believing.
