Looks like the 2026-2027 Broadway season is starting with a real scream. The Paranormal Activity film franchise leaps from the screen to the stage, following in the footsteps of such I.P. extensions as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow. After playing a host of cities — including London, Los Angeles, and Boston, the show opened on Broadway on Tuesday night for a 20-week run that will take it through the Halloween spooky season.
Written by Levi Holloway, this latest bit of Paranormal Activity is essentially a loose remake of the original 2007 film, once again focusing on a couple whose home becomes a playground for a mischievous, and deadly, poltergeist. Instead of Micah and Katie, our heroes are James (Travis A. Knight) and Lou (Cher Álvarez), a newly married couple who have relocated from Chicago to London for work. But something sinister has crossed the pond with them; it turns out that Lou might be a gateway to the spirit realm, and the specific spirit that’s taken up residence in their two story house is in a vengeful mood.
Those well-versed in the franchise’s lore — which spans seven movies, with an eighth on the way next year — won’t find many Easter eggs in the Broadway version. While billed as being set in the same world as the movies, there are few direct narrative connections to what’s come before. What’s still very much in effect are the inventively staged jump scares, which worked their magic on a crowd that included Gold Derby. One moment in particular midway through Act 1 had the audiences gasping before breaking out in appreciative laughter for the magic of spooky theater.
The audience’s reaction plays a big role in many of the reviews for Paranormal Activity, with critics clearly appreciating how Holloway and the play’s team of artisans put on a real horror show for an engaged crowd. We can confirm that the in the room reactions to the paranormal goings-on are a big part of the fun with this particular production, and carries the play through some dramatic dead spots.
Here’s a sampling of the critical reaction to Paranormal Activity.
It’s scary good
Entertainment Weekly‘s Emlyn Travis got the shivers and shakes from Paranormal Activity, raving that the show is “jam-packed with jaw-dropping illusions, stunning performances from its small but mighty cast, and scares so plentiful that its audience was often screaming and applauding at the same time.”
“Tony Award-winning illusions designer Chris Fisher, whose work includes Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Back to the Future, ups the play’s ante even further by employing multiple magic marvels that successfully rattled the entire theater — including one so shocking that I’m still not quite sure how they pulled it off,” continues Travis, referring to the scare that made us jump as well. “Whether you’re a longtime fan, a horror head, or just looking to be scared, Paranormal Activity has something for everyone.”
Variety‘s Frank Rizzo agrees, writing: “The stage version of Paranormal Activity performs on an intimate and domestic scale yet delivers more thrills, chills and screams than Broadway has seen in years, and giving the franchise a legit afterlife. …Yes, it’s only a play but the stakes feel higher when everything in front of us is all too real.”
And Time Out New York‘s Raven Snook pens a four-star rave for this piece of “feary tale” theater. “You don’t need to be familiar with any of the seven Paranormal Activity movies to predict their final destination, but it’s the journey that proves haunting,” she observes, adding: “If you’re in it strictly for jolts, be warned: This show is all about the vibe. From the moment you walk in, the production aims to get in your head.
“The true shocks come in watching Lou and James lose their grips on their lives — and each other — and the liveness of theater heightens the tension by creating a kind of mass hysteria where even innocuous bumps elicit shrieks that evolve into the relief of communal laughter,” Snook continues. “The whole show is a scream.”
It’s scary mediocre
While even some of the mixed reviews trend towards positive, there are a few critics that found the show to be lacking a certain fear factor. Writing in AM New York, Matt Windman notes that the top notch stagecraft couldn’t distract from Paranormal Activity‘s dramatic shortcomings. “Admiring how a trick was pulled off is not the same as being absorbed by the play around it,” he argues. “The effects are more impressive than frightening, and Harry Potter and Stranger Things have already offered more elaborate stage magic,” he writes.
“The bigger problem is everything between the scares,” Windman continues. “At more than two hours, the long stretches of dialogue do not build suspense so much as drain it. Holloway tries to give the haunting psychological weight through grief, guilt and marital tension, but the story remains too thin to sustain the running time.”
And Ron Fassler of Theater Pizzaz also yearned for something a bit more substantial. “What Holloway has done with Paranormal Activity isn’t boring, but it doesn’t make for solid drama,” he notes. “The characters are slight, their dialogue is weak, and it doesn’t amount to much more than a 30-minute Twilight Zone episode stretched to a two-hour running time (with intermission).
“Though the talented, immersive theatre director Felix Barrett (of Sleep No More fame), guides the evening with a skillful hand by showing off a couple of stunning tricks up his sleeve, he is ultimately stymied by a play that stubbornly remains inert,” Fassler adds. “There is little that is original about Paranormal Activity (it’s a common ghost story) and waiting for the next jump scare, built to make the audience scream and clutch one another, grows tiresome. There will surely be those who exit into the night from the August Wilson Theatre fully satisfied, but this ghost story left me more bemused than terrified.”
