The Paranormal Activity franchise dominated the 2010s and helped rejuvenate found footage horror in a way that hadn’t been seen since The Blair Witch Project. The franchise has grossed nearly $900 million, and it will likely break one billion dollars upon the release of 2027’s Paranormal Activity 8.
It’s a franchise that’s become permanently entrenched in pop culture and is largely analogous to modern ghost stories. They’re films that make a lot of sense in an age of rapidly evolving technology and means of surveillance. It’s a bold and brave experiment to adapt this sprawling supernatural found footage franchise into a stageplay. Horror, in theater, is a challenging feat to pull off in general, let alone with a title like Paranormal Activity that carries such expectations.
Broadway’s Paranormal Activity doesn’t just come with the film franchise’s legacy, but its stage adaptation is being handled by an incredible creative team. Paranormal Activity is written by Levi Holloway (The Grey House) and directed by Felix Barrett, the artistic director of Punchdrunk, who was behind New York City’s acclaimed immersive theater experience, Sleep No More. They’re both storytellers who know how to play with perception and highlight the slow dissolution of reality, which are both key components of Paranormal Activity’s sinister structure.
With Paranormal Activity’s Broadway run now officially in motion, Barrett opens up about translating the stylized horror franchise to the stage, the importance of challenging set and sound design, and how to create visceral terror that feeds off the audience.
BLOODY DISGUSTING: To start things off, what was the biggest challenge of not just adapting a horror franchise into a stage play, but one that’s so steeped in the stylistic device of found footage?
FELIX BARRETT: Great question. I jumped on this because I loved the film. I immediately said yes to adapting it before actually really thinking it through. Then, as soon as Levi [Holloway] was on board, it was a discussion about the presentation style. Found footage works very well for the medium of film, but if we’re doing something live for the stage, then we need to adapt the medium for the stage. There was actually an earlier version of the script where we started inside the theater, and we were being quite literal about everything.
Very quickly we decided that we can’t have cameras everywhere because it will remove the audience from the experience and create some distance from the thrills, tragedy, and shock of it all. So we instead went back to the element from the films that this is a real couple. They weren’t famous actors. It was shot as completely truthfully as possible. So we took that plausibility and tried to apply it to the stage. We really wanted the audience to feel like they’re the camera and voyeuristically looking into this house. Nothing is played out to the front of the stage. It needs to feel quite intimate because you, as an audience member, are essentially in the same role.
The multi-room cross-section set design I thought was the perfect way to kind of emulate the movies’ visual design. It slowly conditions the audience to watch multiple rooms at the same time.
FB: Exactly! I got some of that from Sleep No More, where there were like a hundred rooms in the show. There’s a lot of empty space going on in this show. I love the threat that can come from negative space. You can’t quite see everything, which is the reason why the show is so dark. If you could see inside the rooms clearly, then there’d be no mystery there. If you can’t quite make everything out, then your eyes start playing tricks on you, and you don’t know what you can trust. It felt like an exciting way to approach all this.
There was actually a really early version where we did have much more camera stuff. We thought that Jimmy would be filming things, but as soon as we put it on the screen it undermined the whole truth of it. It starts to feel stylized.
Interesting. So there were videos that were being shot that would then be shown on screen?
FB: Yeah, and we knew we didn’t want to do some sort of abstract stylized screen-heavy piece of theater because that’s having a bit of a moment right now on Broadway. I didn’t feel like jumping in on a fad. I also think that it would break everything if it becomes this Brechtian out-of-body experience. We wanted to be in the story with that couple and worry about them, what’s going to happen next, and how they’re going to cope. Screens have an amazing way of dislocating the audience.
There’s a Zoom call at the top of a scene where Lou is just chatting to her colleagues. We shot a lot thinking that you’d see it, and if you could turn the screen around, then you would see it. But it’s better to just see the cast. It puts you inside their heads, and it really makes it feel like you’re actually spying on them. It’s this sort of Peeping Tom thing. There was another bit where we had Jimmy filming the nursery once all the writing is up on the wall, but it just starts to feel weird. It’s derivative and a bit clichéd.
What I think makes the Paranormal Activity films so special – and something that you capture so well in this production – is that they’re these gutting human dramas that also feature supernatural elements. Travis and Cher really do incredible work in these roles that’s just as powerful as any of the horror.
FB: Oh my gosh, their dynamic was so critical to the production from moment one. We talked about how this is essentially a love story. You’re seeing a portrait of a marriage and a couple who are pretty tight and solid, in the amazing throes of love. All that gets forced apart by an entity. In rehearsal, we talked about how we want the audience to look at this relationship and view it as this amazing display of love that hopefully everyone gets to experience at some point in their lives. We wanted their dynamic to be really infectious, in the same way that screams are infectious when they ricochet through a crowd. It’s the same when you watch a happy couple in love.
We really wanted to be as truthful as possible to all that. It’s haunting when you reveal that this isn’t a beautiful safe space and all that happiness gets ripped open. Travis and Cher are so incredible because they are such genuine performances. It’s very much themselves up there. There’s no artifice. The characters are woven through the fabric of their own being, rather than implanted on top. It makes it really resonate for the audience.
I was curious how their performances would come across because there can be a real theatricality to stage performances that’s antithetical to how the Paranormal Activity films work.
FB: I appreciate that because we really tried. There’s such an amazing history to scary things on stage, particularly in this country. The Woman in Black played for 23 years here. When I saw it, it was so hokey. It’s exaggerated, theatrical, and operatic, but I didn’t find it scary at all. What’s scary is that sort of mundane part of life where something could be behind me. That’s the advantage of when something invades that safe, domestic space and gets under your skin. So I’m delighted that that worked for you.
One of the most entertaining aspects of the Paranormal Activity films is how the sense of dread and danger progressively builds over time. Was it challenging to translate that to stage and build increasing tension with each scene?
FB: I think that’s my safe space as a director. When it comes to horror films, I’m drawn to the ones that have creeping dread. I don’t like gore. I don’t really like violence. But I love that sense of gentle unease when you feel the tendrils of doubt wrap around your body and leave you chilled. So it was actually a joy to do that in this show. We always knew it was going to have a false sense of security and then descend into the abyss. I just love all the tools as a director that you have, from light to sound, to actually thicken the atmosphere and tighten it.
I was really blown away by the practical effects and use of visual tricks that are done here to bring the show’s scares to life. That trapdoor fall early on is so, so effective. Can you talk a little bit about workshopping these scares and figuring out the best way to bring these horror moments to life?
FB: Well, it’s interesting. We had a really early version of the draft at one point that was just Levi and I working on it. We were talking about the things that we would find the most frightening, like when someone just stops. Things that are uncanny and weird, but not schlocky. So that moment ended up in the script. We were speaking to various creative teams and trying to find the right alchemy of people. I remember a few who had said, “How the hell are you going to do that?” Well, if you’re asking that question, then you’re probably not the right person to do it.
We’re lucky to have the genius of Chris Fisher, who is the Illusions Designer, who also worked on Harry Potter & the Cursed Child and Stranger Things: The First Shadow. In Sleep No More, we had a couple of magic tricks, but the illusionist only came in like the last week before we opened. It was just like an extra cherry on the cake. For this process, we did the opposite. Before we’d even fully designed a set or had all our team members, we spent a week in London figuring out how to play with these tricks and how you can manifest a haunting. I told Chris that I don’t want to know how these things are done. We talked about all the things that we’re trying to do, but I came in as an audience member who was just blown away. Now, frustratingly, I know how some of them are done. But I knew that it could scare ourselves in the cold light of day, playing around with cardboard; then we were on to something. Chris is just a genius.
The reactions in the audience were bigger than the reactions I’ve experienced in the movie theater for the Paranormal Activity movies. It must have been so satisfying to just hear that stuff connect and know that it’s working.
FB: It’s an absolute privilege. With Sleep No More, everyone is in masks, so you don’t actually know how stuff has connected until you’re at the bar afterwards. So I’ve never experienced this where you get everyone responding as one. There are points in the show where we can gauge how raucous the crowd will be, and it’s very satisfying for the cast to experience. What I love is you get a scream, but then you also get a beat, and then you get laughter. And that’s so cathartic. We, oddly enough, talk about the show being quite joyous because of that. There are as many smiles and laughs as there are screams, which feels really important.
I was also really taken by the use of lighting and shadow in order to create even greater tension. The use of natural lighting from the flashlight and the cell phone in specific scenes is really effective. How did you approach lighting and figure out the right aesthetic there?
FB: Anna Watson, our Lighting Designer, is just the best. We’re blessed with the most incredible team where everyone is a master of their field. When we first spoke with Anna, we were talking about how we didn’t want it to feel like a play. We wanted it to feel real. We were quite restrained and doing less. Typically, in a play, you’d have someone pretending to use a flashlight, and you’d have a little bit of throw light. We wanted to embrace the things and make light and shadow our best friend.
With darkness, you want the audience to have to color in details themselves. They have to fill that space in, and therefore they become more invested in it. That’s where the real fear lies in the audience’s minds. So we knew that we wanted things to be shrouded in darkness. It’s why the top room — the nursery — doesn’t have any natural light. It’s all deliberate choices so that the house is never fully lit. It makes you paranoid that something is going to come out from somewhere.
Sound design is also such an important element in selling scares, in both theater and cinema. You do such great work with the audio in this show. How did you figure out and refine things there?
FB: Oh my gosh, you should see the amount of time that’s been spent on the tech. It’s so meticulous. Gareth Fry, our Sound Designer, is also one of the most experienced people. He’s won Tonys and everything. He’s an absolute master. If you switch the sound off and there was no sound, I don’t think that the show would work. I think it would be interesting, but it wouldn’t have any impact. The thickness, the dread, and the trouble all come from the sound. I hope it feels quite effortless, but you should see the smorgasbord of sound cues and the level of detail that’s going on there. There’s so much layering and even moments where the inflections of single words have something audio-based to support them.
The Paranormal Activity films always do such a good job of ending on these abrupt, unsettling, chaotic notes, and this show is no exception. Was it difficult to figure out the right energy for the show’s finish and how to go out?
FB: Yes, absolutely. That was the other thing that we took from the films. We wanted to honor their restraint, the plausibility of the couple, and I knew that we had to match the ending because that’s the bit that I loved when I saw the film. Those last few seconds where everything escalates like it’s an exponential crescendo. On day one, we were like, “How the hell do you do that on stage?” It’s been hard. I’ve got to say, we’ve actually changed that ending. We’ve changed it for this version from when we first did it in the UK. It had a different ending then, but it wasn’t brutal enough. So we’ve scaled it up and made it more abrupt. It makes it feel like there’s maybe some hope, but then it’s a sucker punch to the audience. It’s our way of paying respect to Oren [Peli] and the original film.
This show had previous runs on the West End, Chicago, and Boston. You mentioned the ending being revised, but was there anything learned from those runs that led to any changes in the Broadway production?
FB: Yeah, there are multiple things. You learn so much of that by going back to the audience and their screams. We’ve been honing and perfecting everything for this Broadway version. There’s a bunch here that wasn’t in the past versions. There’s a bit at the end of Act One which is completely new. I don’t want to say what it is to spoil it for the audience, but it’s a whole new illusion. It’s a whole new bit of stagecraft that’s baked into it. And then there are also little changes, inflections, and tweaks throughout the show.
So much of this stuff, in both film and on stage, comes down to timing. It’s been really interesting to speak with film producers. When you’re making a horror film, you do your first cut, and then you screen test it and work out the bits that don’t land how they should, and then you go back and reshoot it or re-cut it. It’s a very similar process for us as we explore different things in different territories. If the bits don’t land like we want them to, then we amend them. Sometimes you need that beat before something lands. You attack people when they feel like they’re in a safe space. It’s been so much fun to make the screams louder or the gasps more acute on Broadway. This is the definitive version of it.
After successfully tackling a stage version of Paranormal Activity, would you be interested in adapting any other horror classics?
FB: Absolutely. This just whetted our appetite for what’s possible. As a team, we’re definitely knocking on the door of some titles because there are some things that we would love to do. We’d also love to do a thriller, too. I hope it’s just the beginning.
I think of The Blair Witch Project as this formative found footage predecessor to Paranormal Activity, which had me thinking if it’s possible to do a version of that on stage.
FB: I’d love to do Blair Witch in like a Sleep No More fashion. The scale of Sleep No More and with that much autonomy. That would be absolutely terrifying and amazing to do in a forest. But for now, on stage, there are things that we really want to do.
