Supernatural horror film Paranormal Activity has spawned a West End play – and even its director screamed fear | platform

MEvil spirits be damned, theaters can simply be haunted by the memory of bad plays, and perhaps not particularly scary horrors. The last time London’s Ambassadors Theater aimed to give audiences the shivers, with The Enfield Haunting, it led to some frighteningly bad reviews. But two years later, this intimate West End theater is hosting Paranormal Activity, a new installment in the franchise that began with a low-budget supernatural film about a couple who suffer from inexplicable nighttime noises. “Keep your cool” is the play’s motto – a directive she believes applies not only to the audience.

Arriving at the theater on first preview day, it’s not frightening bumps and thuds that echo through the building, but buzzing rehearsals, sound checks and last-minute crew discussions with a deadline. American playwright Levi Holloway and director Felix Barrett (known as the founder of immersive theater company Punchdrunk) sit at the circular bar, discussing how rarely they feel afraid in the theatre.

“I saw ‘The Woman in Black’ 20 years ago,” Barrett says. “I wanted so badly for it to be the scariest thing I’d ever seen. There were boom moments and moments but it just didn’t get me… I didn’t see anything that really scared me. We’re raising the bar on that ambition.”

Holloway’s CV includes Gray House, a thrilling drama set in a cabin in the middle of a blizzard, as well as a retelling of Pinocchio that ups the fairy tale’s fear factor. “I think horror in the theater is both a burden and a privilege,” he says. “It’s very daunting. If the first question you ask is how do you scare someone, you’re probably in the wrong place… Good theater is usually about forcing people to change. Horror is usually about people having to change in order to survive. So you just have to have a good, honest story. And the weapons you use to unnerve or scare have to be present in the narrative.”

The duo asserts that horror brings audiences together like no other genre – even more than musicals or comedies. “It’s kind of a safety check on your neighbor, which seems somewhat relevant right now,” Holloway says. “Does this scare you too? Yes, stranger, it scares me too!”

Barrett says it provides catharsis “when the world itself is too scary” and the result is “strangely exhilarating.” “Imagine if a roller coaster only had one car,” Holloway adds. “It’s something different. There’s something very exciting about the camaraderie that happens in the lobby at intermission or after the show.” The pair enjoy eavesdropping on the restless audience as they wrap their heads around the mystery of the show.

Paranormal Activity premiered at Leeds Playhouse in the summer of 2024 (it has since been given a new ending) and a parallel production is touring the US to great acclaim. “The amazing thing about this, which is different from anything I’ve done before, is that we did illusions first,” Barrett says. Illusion designer Chris Fisher used to call in later in the process. “The idea is in the title – we knew it had to be baked,” Barrett explains.

Set designer Fly Davis created a two-story house for the play’s couple who had recently married in Chicago and moved to London for a fresh start. “They quickly face a reality they can’t escape,” Holloway says. “So it’s about marriage and the ghosts that each person brings to that marriage.”

The first Paranormal Activity film, written and directed by Oren Peli and filmed in his home over the course of seven days, suggests that people may be as mysterious as the occult — and perhaps as malevolent as any demon. The seven films in the series also explore the stressful situations that come with change and leave us vulnerable – like moving to a new city or starting a family. When starting work on the show, Barrett and Holloway were as sleep-deprived as a doomed Paranormal Activity character. “Our children were born back to back when we started this process,” Holloway says. “The original haunting!” Barrett laughs. Holloway says he hopes audiences will find the couple in the play familiar because his script “gives teeth to the mundane.” For Barrett, “it’s an image of marriage and then there’s a third force coming in.” Holloway laughs: “Three!”

What got Barrett excited about the project was the memory of the first film’s trailer in 2009 that showed moviegoers’ horrified reactions. (It helped create a buzz that led to the $15,000 film grossing more than $100 million within weeks at the U.S. box office.) Barrett’s eyes twinkled as he relished the opportunity to “make the audience physically recoil in the theater.” He hopes that seeing “the sweat and the fear in the actors’ eyes” will “bring it home more directly.”

Grounding the story in realism was key. The franchise followed the found footage technique of The Blair Witch Project, with the first film featuring a series of time-coded nighttime video recordings in which the pair – like the audience – scanned each frame to help detect strange activity. It’s a “genius tool” for filmmaking, Barrett says. “But we made the decision on day one not to do that – let’s create a story around the verve, the threat and the plausibility of what a live audience might be afraid of.” He adds, “There’s a lot of cinematic trickery and camera work that happens across the stage in general… We wanted to dig in and play with the idea of ​​safety, and what happens when that’s under threat.”

Horror theater is all the rage. 2:22 – Ghost Story, with its celebrity-led cast, has had several seasons in the West End and is on tour. The apocalyptic comedy Inside No 9: Stage/Fright returns for another tour in London in January. Rose Glass’s haunting Saint Maud was brought to life on stage in Newcastle last year. Meanwhile, Stranger Things: The First Shadow has been running for two years at the Phoenix Theater in London and is likely to get a boost from the Netflix show’s fifth season.

What do the duo say to those who bemoan the current dominance of plays based on such intellectual property? “They’re in the service of bringing new audiences to the theater,” Holloway says. “We’ve been fortunate enough to do something original that’s tied to a franchise, but it’s about our fingerprint.”

Barrett says that although the Paranormal Activity banner will attract new theatergoers, Holloway has written an emotionally affecting play that “could have a different title and be staged at the Royal Court instead… There’s a touchstone that audiences will know if they’re a fan of the franchise but we strived to create something with substance.”

On previous tours of the play, they both noticed a new audience in the theater world. “Like people shouting on stage: ‘Don’t go in there!’ “It’s very loud,” Holloway says. “It took a minute, but then we started to embrace it because people were coming up to us and saying…is this what theater could be?”

Horror films and books fueled the duo’s collaboration and blossoming friendship. They rewatched Don’t Look Now, Jacob’s Ladder and When a Stranger Calls, and turned to Arthur Machen’s stories and Joe Hill’s novels. “We like creepy horror rather than absurd gore,” Barrett adds. “Tendrils of film wrap around your neck.” As such, atmosphere is crucial to Paranormal Activity, which features sound design by Gareth Fry and lighting by Anna Watson.

“The lights are as much a part of the narrative as they are the design, the illusion, the casting… you need an alchemy of components to get the space between them,” Barrett says. “In a two-storey house, you can’t see everything at once. There are nooks and shadows where your imagination fills in the gaps. Anna’s lighting is amazing. You think you can only see the back of the room but you quite can’t. As your claustrophobia increases, your imagination starts to play tricks on you, like when you’re a child in your bedroom.” During rehearsals, the company discussed their childhood fears and played games such as “Grandma’s Footsteps.”

Holloway: “The whole thing is kind of audacious.”
Barrett: “It is! I screamed with fear and joy yesterday.”
Holloway: “Yesterday! I’ve seen that a thousand times already…”
Barrett: “It’s a visceral response. It took the journey from Leeds to here to get to that fitness.”

The “Ambassadors” theater with its proscenium arch is a not at all drunken place. “It’s a great vacation,” Barrett laughs. “I taste it!” His company, founded in 2000, has built a huge fan base by taking over often unconventional spaces to deliver stunning location-specific performances. More recently, their shows (including the gothic Viola Room) have been performed at their sprawling headquarters at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, south-east London. But years of finding suitable locations for their shows have given Barrett an astute understanding of the feel of the building.

“The primary function of any Punchdrunk show is to listen to the atmosphere of a place, to locate threat, the tangible remnants of something that has gone before – the weight of time that can be keenly felt in the space.”

But how much do they believe in the supernatural shebang? “I like to believe that,” Holloway says. “And I believe people when they believe that. But I’ve never experienced the paranormal before. I’m open to it.” “I don’t believe in that at all, but I’m obsessed with the history of spiritualism,” Barrett adds.

Many West End theaters are said to harbor ghosts, from the Man in Gray at the Theater Royal Drury Lane to the Actor and Manager at the Theater Royal Haymarket. But the Ambassadors are not famously haunted. “It will be after this show,” Barrett joked. Holloway laughs: “We’re working on it!”