Paranormal Activity is a bad omen for Broadway

Nowadays on Broadway, you've got to have a gimmick.

It's not enough to be beloved or even acclaimed. Just look at Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a bodacious revival that re-imagined Andrew Lloyd Webber's Broadway smash as a ballroom runway, bringing the audience into the experience and onto the stage. Critics cheered, audiences clacked their fans in appreciation, and the Tonys gave three awards, including Best Direction of a Musical. Yet, none of that stopped The Jellicle Ball from closing weeks after it received those Tony flowers.

Even a grateful community that loved Cats, Webber, or ballroom culture couldn't keep Jellicle Ball rolling. So, it's little surprise that Broadway producers are favoring a seemingly endless array of theatrical adaptations of movies, TV, and other popular IP. Just this year, Broadway saw The Lost Boys: A New Musical, Titanique, Schmigadoon, and Dog Day Afternoon competing for crowds, while Heated Rivalry got an off-Broadway unofficial parody faster than it got a vinyl soundtrack release. Some of these were marvelous, others interesting, and then there was Beaches.

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Now, Paranormal Activity joins the fray. The theatrical production that premiered in Leeds ahead of a West End debut in 2025 has been garnering praise along its path to Broadway, which included a sold-out run in Los Angeles. The buzz was so infectious that I entered the August Wilson Theatre giddy with anticipation.

Unfortunately, what Paranormal Activity has to offer is not a great night at the theater. It's a series of jump scares that falls short of the spectacle Broadway demands.

Paranormal Activity is not for fans of the franchise.

Cher Alvarez and Travis A. Knight star in "Paranormal Activity" on Broadway. Credit: Matthew Murphy

Though the show's Playbill notes Oren Peli's 2007 film of the same name as an inspiration, the similarities between Broadway's Paranormal Activity and its source material is thinner than the veil between the living and the dead.

Written by Levi Holloway, this new story centers on an American married couple who've recently moved from Chicago to London for a fresh start. Why London? There is no why. As the whole show is set within the walls of a small house, Paranormal Activity could be set anywhere. The key thing is that the haunted couple at its center has nowhere to escape to. Being new in town means the ruthlessly rational James (Travis A. Knight) and his distraught wife Lou (Cher Álvarez) have no local support system as they face some paranormal anomalies.

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Like Katie from the first Paranormal Activity film, Lou is haunted by a dark incident in her past, and fears an entity that is stalking her. James is her Micah, a male partner who insists he's looking to help while he scoffs at the possibility of the supernatural, and even taunts the could-be creature. In this case, he proclaims, "Fuck the bogeyman." And yes, a jump scare follows.

Holloway's play rejects the lore of the Paranormal Activity franchise that grew across sequels and spinoffs. Plus, it pivots subgenres, leaving behind the found footage aspect and changes the taxonomy of the entity at its center. Individually, none of these things is a problem per se, but altogether they left this horror lover wondering why this production is even called Paranormal Activity when it's got nothing to do with the pre-established IP.

Paranormal Activity can't compare to the other horror treasures of Broadway (past and present).

Cher Alvarez stars in "Paranormal Activity" on Broadway. Credit: Matthew Murphy

For starters, Paranormal Activity can't hold a candle to The Lost Boys, a musical that smartly cherry-picked the campiest bits of Joel Schumacher's vampire cult classic and then constructed a stronger emotional story, leaned into the queer subtext, and made cinema moments come alive onstage with intoxicating stunt spectacles. Nor does Paranormal Activity compare to the recently shuttered Death Becomes Her, where the memorable murderous mayhem was re-imagined for onstage comedy gags that had audiences rolling like Madeline Ashton down that long staircase.

Now, you could argue that Paranormal Activity shouldn't be compared to big, flashy musical adaptations of cult classics. In that case, I'll point to Grey House, which was also written by Holloway. On Broadway in 2023, that play was also a horror story set within a humble home, this one visited by an unsuspecting married couple, unsure what to make of the odd children and the old woman who live there.

Grey House was a show that oozed in dread. Cryptic conversations left the audience to scramble for understanding, binding us to the coupled visitors, who've made a fateful mistake by coming here. I still remember the feeling of chills creeping up my limbs as Laurie Metcalf grimaced or chided the children and grown-ups alike. Three years later, the specifics of the scares have faded. Something about a fridge, a couch that seemed to gobble up a full-grown man, a basement door, always ominous. What I recall clearly is how I screamed, so loud and often that I was actually pretty embarrassed.

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Did I scream at Paranormal Activity? Yes. But not often. For every jump scare that shook me to scream, there were scads that failed to even make me flinch. The audience around giggled throughout, perhaps out of nervousness from the scares, or over the caustic humor the couple slings at each other. But it was less the atmosphere of a horror movie, where everyone is sharing the experience of surrendering to the spooky story, and more like a theme-park presentation.

The laughter felt like an audience looking to be amused, not scared. And director Felix Barrett delivered with common haunted house tropes. Lights flicker. A shadowy figure races across the stage. A could-be nursery's door slams with force, and recurringly, a deafening blare of noise will explode to make the audience leap in their seats. But after the first few scares, the beats of terror become predictable.

In between grim gags, Paranormal Activity is a tale of a toxic love that's more gratingly one-note than great. Knight and Álvarez bring intensity, whether arguing about the advice from a ghost-hunting podcaster (Eva Kaminsky) or hiding the haunting from James' nosy mom (Shannon Cochran), who's always just a video call away. But the emotional thrust of their story becomes undermined once Paranormal Activity reveals the entity can mimic others. So, as a conversation grows electrically vulnerable, there's the nagging thought that it could a cruel ruse, and not an actual breakthrough between two loved ones who can't share their truth.

A similar device of doppelgängers and the fear of intimacy was explored in Leviticus this year. And so let me take the opportunity to say again: go see Leviticus. It's scary as hell and has something to say. Which can't be said for Paranormal Activity, where it makes already thinly sketched characters feel even less complex.

Paranormal Activity on Broadway is betting on the gimmick.

Travis A. Knight stars in "Paranormal Activity" on Broadway. Credit: Matthew Murphy

This is a new story that doesn't require its audience to remember anything about Katie or Micah or their demon Tobi. Rather than using that as an opportunity to find fresh thrills in the horror-theater space, Holloway's play feels like a murky echo of Grey House. The house and the story appear similar, but the scares in the hands of Barrett don't hit as hard.

Barrett, who is a founder of the immersive British theater company Punchdrunk (Sleep No More), fails to bring the audience into the experience of being trapped in his haunted house. Where Titanique built out the stage to include the audience, or Jellicle Ball had cats running into the aisles and mezzanine, Paranormal Activity keeps the stage as a clear distinction. The home, traditionally built as if one wall was shorn away, has the look of a dollhouse. And the seats in the theater mean if you're close to the front, or off to the sides, your view will be obstructed by staunch interior walls. But even more irksome, Barrett doesn't make compelling use of the space.

In The Lost Boys, director/co-lighting designer Michael Arden used spotlights and other lighting effects to draw the audience's eye, guiding us to one scary spectacle, while setting up another in the shadows. It was a visual cue reminiscent of video games, giving our eye. Paranormal Activity doesn’t offer such guides. For large swaths, my eyes scanned the dimly lit house, desperate to see something spooky but unsure where I was supposed to look. Was I meant to follow James upstairs as he urinates in the bathroom? Was I meant to keep an eye on the light that flickered or on Lou approaching the back door?

In horror, a wide shot can be uniquely terrifying, because it invites you to look into the seeming stillness and shadows, where a slasher or creature might lurk, unseen by the hero. In Paranormal Activity, that looking too often led to nothing. And sometimes, it meant I was looking in the wrong place, confounded and frustrated as an audience member across the way let out a gasp of excitement. I yearned to feel that gasp. But this Paranormal Activity isn't as scary as a great horror movie or a great Broadway show.

Instead, it's betting on audiences who want a not-so-cheap thrill. Opening so far from Tony nominations, the show suggests little expectation of being remembered next summer. Instead, it opens in time for Halloween and runs 20 weeks as a higher-class alternative to a haunted hayride. For Christmas, it's a spooky kid alternative to the Radio City show.

But with a thin story and underwhelming spectacle, Paranormal Activity is bad omen for Broadway. It's another example of shallowly adapted IP taking the space for something daring that could actually give us chills.

Paranormal Activity is playing at New York City's August Wilson Theater until Jan. 3.