‘Paranormal Activity’: Scary Stuff on Broadway

A good theater production can affect us in a lot of ways. It can make us laugh, or bring us to tears; deliver the catharsis of tragedy, or send us out of the theater on a musical high; probe the complexities of family relations, or bring to life a stimulating intellectual debate. But one thing that seems outside its capabilities is giving us a good scare.

I can think of only a few exceptions: the famous jump-scare at the end of Wait Until Dark; some authentically creepy storytelling in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman; the truly alarming final moment of Conor McPherson’s Shining City. But nothing that can match the sustained tension that even a cheap horror film— those grisly slasher epics, haunted-house frightfests, and Evil Dead reboots — can generate.

So Paranormal Activity, the new Broadway play based (very loosely) on one of those low-budget horror franchises, is something of a revelation: the first play I’ve seen that really delivers the scares.

Written by Levi Holloway (whose Grey House, a more muddled ghost story, had a brief run on Broadway three years ago) and directed by Felix Barrett (artistic director of Punchdrunk, the British company behind the hit immersive show Sleep No More), the play pulls us in immediately. Not with scares, but with a patient, ominous slow-build. 

We are introduced to a young American couple who are just settling into a house in London where they’ve relocated, thanks to a job transfer. Only a year into their marriage, the strains are starting to show. She is battling bouts of depression, and seems drawn to the supernatural. He is too indulgent of his meddling mother back home, and is a confirmed skeptic. 

But both are forced to reckon with the strange occurrences in the house. Barrett uses the simplest of stage effects to keep our nerves on edge: shadowy lighting, sudden bursts of sound, a two-level set featuring an upstairs bedroom, bathroom, and a door leading — where? And when he pulls off a bravura stage trick near the end of the first act — a classic “how’d they do that?” moment — we are totally sucked in.  

The play takes some narrative turns in the second act that I might quibble with: a podcast-popular psychic arrives to conduct a séance, and secrets from the couple’s past are gradually revealed to be the animating force behind the ghostly doings. Still, the play is a riveting, edge-of-your-seat winner.  

Depending, that is, on where your seat is. 

I don’t want to end this review on a down note. But watching Paranormal Activity highlighted a problem that I frequently have on Broadway, but one that is rarely acknowledged. Especially for a play that depends so much on visual effects, some of the crucial ones are, quite simply, difficult to see. I was sitting in row M of the orchestra at the 1,200-seat August Wilson Theater, and my eyesight isn’t the greatest, but two key shock moments that drew gasps from the crowd (presumably those sitting closer than me) didn’t quite register. What about the folks sitting behind me and in the mezzanine?  

Theater critics almost never bring up this issue, for the simple reason that it rarely affects them. They typically get the best seats in the house — center orchestra, just a few rows from the front — where they can make out facial expressions and other visual subtleties that most of the audience can’t. When I was reviewing plays for TIME, I once wrote a piece in which I made a second visit to several top Broadway shows and re-watched them from the cheap seats. It was a much different experience.

Luckily, this doesn’t ruin Paranormal Activity. Indeed, I think the show is a breakthrough: proof that frightening a theater audience isn’t as hard as one might expect. Nor as risky: buoyed by strong reviews, Paranormal Activity is doing near sellout business. Given the genre’s penchant for sequels and knockoffs, expect more to come. Fasten your seatbelts. Preferably row L or closer.