Paranormal Activity delivers stage frights

Horror plays are hard to pull off on Broadway, as Holloway’s own somewhat creaky Grey House demonstrated in 2023. But Paranormal Activity is a much more successful fright night. Barrett, who codirected Sleep No More, leans into voyeurism and elicits excellent performances from Álvarez and Knight. 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. The whole show is a scream.