A stage play inspired by the Paranormal Activity film franchise arrived at San Francisco's ACT in recent weeks, and it could presage a new paradigm for the horror genre coming to the live theater.

Fans of the Paranormal Activity film series, and fans of modern horror in general, will likely find plenty to scream over and flinch at in the stage adaptation now playing at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater. Written by Chicago-based playwright Levi Hollway and directed by Felix Barrett, Paranormal Activity has been on a mini-tour in recent months after premiering in Chicago, making stops in DC and LA before landing here.

The action of the play all takes place in a dollhouse-like, two-story set, a home in a suburban area, presumably near London, where American couple Lou and James (Cher Alvarez and Travis A. Knight) and have recently moved for James's job. In the opening scene, in which James has a Facetime call with his mother Carolanne (Shannon Cochran), we learn that Lou is on medication after some mental health episodes that seem to be unexplained, and that began when the couple lived in Chicago.

Much like the first Paranormal Activity film, the story is primarily about this couple, and how one or both of them are being haunted and tormented by a supernatural being — but in this version we don't have all the found footage and video-recording tropes of the film.

There are still technical components, namely the TV monitor that doubles as a Facetime monitor on the wall of the kitchen, and which plays occasional British game shows and talk shows in the background; an often very loud soundsystem that blares music from a variety of radio stations; and a strange device that picks up on mysterious frequencies, toted in by spirit-world expert Etheline Cotgrave (Kate Fry) — who is also a radio personality we hear at the opening of the show. The line, delivered by Etheline over the radio which ACT Artistic Director Pam McKinnon says first drew her into the script, is "Places aren't haunted, people are."

What unfolds over two acts and roughly two hours is a deeply unsettling moodscape and, for horror fans, a delightful set of jump-scares created not through movie magic but through good, old-fashioned stagecraft. Each of these is more chilling that the last, culminating in a truly horrific end — something that, instead of credits rolling, gets followed instead by the whiplash image of smiling actors returning to the stage to take a bow.

I was late to the party with this show due to personal travel and missed last week's opening (the show also was in previews for a week prior to that). So word of mouth among local horror mavens has already gotten around — leading to ACT having a record-breaking week in terms of box-office sales last week.

It's hard to critique this as a piece of serious theater — I have questions about the significance of several moments, including one in which the lead male, Travis A. Knight, seems to flash half the audience while urinating in an upstairs bathroom with what might have been prosthetic penis? It is a story about trauma that draws us through that trauma, and the performances are believable up to a point. But much like in horror movies, the effectiveness of the performances, and the wittiness or pathos of the dialogue, are mostly just in the service of the jump scares and the overall vibe.

But that vibe? Those jump scares? Top notch. The thrills are made all the more visceral by the fact that we aren't separated by a screen, and we're watching them in living, breathing 3D. It's also kind of fascinating to experience what would normally happen in a movie theater — collective shrieks and gasps, people talking at the actors out loud in moments of terror — in a live theater.

ACT has tried a few things in the last couple of years to draw in new and younger audiences, including that restyled Wizard of Oz adaptation in 2023. But Paranormal Activity may be more of a winner where this is concerned, especially for audience members who never knew that a theatrical play could put you through an emotional wringer like this and spit you out the other side. Much like kids raised on streaming services at home have discovered that horror movies are best experienced on a larger screen with a hundred other people in the dark, a production like this could be like a gateway drug to bring them to some of the more serious — and equally  thrilling — stuff that theater has to offer.

'Paranormal Activity' has been extended and plays through March 22. Find tickets here.

Top image: Photo by Kyle Flubacker