‘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.