‘Paranormal Activity’ review: Screen to stage horror

What’s scarier, a world with ghosts or a world without them?

I pondered this question on the drive downtown to see “Paranormal Activity,” a stage play based on the Paramount Pictures movie franchise of the same title. I confess that I’ve not seen any of the seven films in the series. But it’s not snobbery that has kept me away. I’m still recovering from my grandmother having taken me as a kid to see “Damien — Omen II.”

I’m too old for night terrors. But at my age, health insurance companies are a good deal more frightening than the devil. What‘s scarier, a world with demonic forces or a world with unforeseen medical bills? Give me Damien!

In short, I assumed “Paranormal Activity,” which just completed a run at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, wasn’t for me. Boy, was I wrong. The production, which opened at the Ahmanson Theatre on Friday under the direction of Felix Barrett, is brilliantly pulled off. I caught myself wondering during the first act, “Is this the best staged production of the year?”

I yelped in my seat. I reached for my companion a few times when panic overcame me. I closed my eyes when I knew something terrible was going to happen. The scenic and sound elements were synchronized to produce maximum terror. The illusions and projections had me seeing things I couldn’t believe I was seeing. And yet what made the deepest impression on me was the lifelike situation of the young married couple at the center of the play, written and restaged by Levi Holloway, the author of the spooky Broadway play “Grey House.”

James (Patrick Heusinger) and Lou (Cher Álvarez) have moved from Chicago to London for a fresh start. His company has put them up in a spacious home (by pricey London standards) with a few eerie quirks. The radiators make quite the racket and the electricity seems to have a mind of its own.

Lou has been struggling with her mental health, though there’s more going on than psychiatry can explain. James is doing his best to be a patient and understanding husband, but when Lou tells him about the strange things that have happened when she’s alone, he can’t help wondering whether she’s been taking her meds.

Coming upon their one-year anniversary, they seem to be figuring how to move forward as a couple. They love each other, but it feels like a make or break moment. One source of tension rises above the rest. James has built a nursery upstairs, but Lou isn’t sure that it’s the right time to try to have a baby.

Carolanne (Shannon Cochran), James’ pious mother in Boca Raton who makes intrusive video calls, is determined to have a grandbaby before she dies and worries that all Lou’s psychiatric medications may be getting in the way.

James grew up religious, but lost his faith. (He too ponders whether a world without ghosts is scarier than a world with them.) Lou assumes her husband is an atheist and doesn’t understand when she discovers a Bible in the house. Mysterious things keep happening — music suddenly blasts, doors slam, the lights go out and the alarm system roars in the middle of the night. But “Paranormal Activity” suggests — in a neo-Pinteresque fashion — that the unknowability of another person is more terrifying than supernatural pyrotechnics.

In moments of conflict, Lou withdraws while James feverishly tries to engage. It seems like she’s the one who’s hiding something, but James’ veneer of normality is not quite what it seems. They’re both keeping secrets, but how exactly are their marital problems related to the inexplicable bumps in the night?

I didn’t understand at first why James and Lou didn’t flee the house the moment shadows appeared out of nowhere. I would have booked a hotel room as soon as Alexa started taking cues from some unholy presence. But it’s not the house that’s haunted so much as the couple. Lou assumes she’s to blame. A shadow, possibly related to the death of her parents in a house fire when she was a girl, has been tormenting her for ages.

The trouble in Chicago has followed them to London. There seems to be no escape. Etheline Cotgrave (Kate Fry), a medium with her own podcast, pays an emergency visit to the house and detects not only dangerous occult activity but marital warning signs. When all hell breaks loose during her quasi-scientific seance, she recognizes that the problem is beyond her capacities and that the house spells their doom.

At this point, I had only my asthma inhaler to comfort me. How can a stage play be so scary? “2:22 – A Ghost Story,” a spooky drama that came to the Ahmanson in 2022, wasn’t nearly as effective.

Credit goes not only to the writer but to the production team. Barrett (best known for his immersive staging of Punchdrunk’s “ Sleep No More”) and his collaborators are masters of misdirection. While audiences are focused on one area of the stage, something furtive is happening on another.

The split-level house (brought to life by scenic designer Fly Davis, who also did the costumes) provides the false security of a comprehensive view. Yet Anna Watson‘s ingenious lighting keeps certain areas plunged in darkness, and that disturbing nursery door is usually closed.

Gareth Fry’s sound design recognizes that our ears are the gateways to our nervous systems. Luke Halls’ video design lends the occult eruptions enough plausible deniability to keep the characters (and the audience) stupidly hoping that everything will somehow be all right. Chris Fisher’s illusions will make you think you’re seeing double. You are!

Amid all this otherworldly craziness, Holloway’s dialogue is more naturalistic than most domestic dramas. And the actors are unerringly authentic. Heusinger’s James has a seductive earnestness that conceals some shocking character developments. But there are cracks in the facade.

Álvarez‘s Lou is even harder to get a handle on. Her reticence is self-protective, but she can come off as cold. The warmth of the couple’s connection, however, is never in doubt.

Cochran and Fry have showier supporting roles that allow them to play up the eccentricities of their characters. Thankfully, Cochran, a formidable realist who won an Obie for her performance in Tracy Letts’ “Bug,” isn’t consigned to video call appearances as James’ mother. I won’t give away how she turns up, but Cochran makes horror distressingly real. As for Fry, when her Etheline loses her sangfroid, I was ready to bolt.

Holloway’s character observations are faultless, but the resolution of the story isn’t fully satisfying. Certain plot points are overexplained; others are left to fall by the wayside. The play is more impressive mathematically than poetically. I’m a proponent of the Henry James school of ghost stories. In his novella “The Turn of the Screw,” the connection between the supernatural and the psychological is allowed to suggestively simmer.

Artists know that enigmas bring us closer to the truth. When that happens in “Paranormal Activity,” the fear is eye-opening.

Of course the very strange incident involving my car alarm after I returned home from the show was purely coincidental. I mean, just because it’s never gone off before for no reason after I parked outside my door is no reason to believe that anything peculiar was going on.