Paranormal Activity writer on why the found footage format was ditched for West End adaptation

Nearly two decades after Paranormal Activity premiered at US film festival Screamfest, the franchise is making a surprising return to modern day horror, with an all-new adaptation at London’s West End.

Written by Levi Holloway, the production began life at Leeds Playhouse in 2023, before travelling across the US and now settling into the Ambassadors Theatre until next March.

However, this new version packs a sizeable shift from the original film series, as Holloway and director Felix Barrett decided that the film’s signature found-footage style was "not translatable to the stage in practice".

The solution, Holloway says, was to strip the franchise "down to its essence – the feeling that the audience is seeing something they shouldn’t".

Working with Barrett, and the wider creative team, they created a world where “in a play about ghosts,” Holloway sees “the real ghosts on stage are the story makers”.

Inspiration for the play didn’t just come from the original movie. Holloway and Barrett swapped “stories back and forth. Books that made us put them down because we were genuinely scared”, diving into the works of Arthur Machen, MR James and Charles Dickens. They also revisited classic films like Don’t Look Now, When a Stranger Calls and Rosemary’s Baby to help define the play’s tone.

“Horror is personal,” Holloway says. “The only question we can really ask is: what scares us?”

And, while the franchise comes with a huge fanbase, the team “weren’t constrained by fan expectations; we just wanted to make a good play”. The story retains some familiar beats, but tonal faithfulness mattered far more than literal replication. Fans will spot subtle Easter eggs, but nothing that would confuse newcomers.

As with any horror media, you can expect scares, but it’s also a genre built on emotional and psychological tension. Holloway’s adaptation, like the original, centres on a married couple, James and Lou, who move from Chicago to London.

“I wanted to write about the way people try to connect,” he explains. “People are haunted. We carry all kinds of things with us […] then when two people bring their ghosts into a marriage, sometimes something goes wrong”.

Those themes sit at the heart of the production, no matter how familiar audiences are with the film.

Paranormal Activity famously had trailers showing audiences screaming and clutching one another in cinemas. Theatre, Holloway argues, taps into the same instinct.

“When you watch a horror play in real time, you sanity-check with your neighbour,” he says. “’Are you scared too?’ ‘Yeah, I’m scared too.’ And that binds you.”

He’s witnessed complete strangers hold onto each other during performances: “It’s pretty incredible.”

Ultimately, Holloway doesn’t want audiences to leave simply feeling scared.

“I hope they see themselves in the work somehow,” he says. “I want them to ask what would they do, how would they react, and when they go home wonder if they can really turn off the lights before they go sleep.”

Buy Paranormal Activity tickets from £29 at LOVEtheatre

How to get Paranormal Activity West End tickets

Tickets to see this thrilling stage production are on sale right now. Simply head over to trusted theatre ticket site LOVEtheatre to get your hands on tickets.

Buy Paranormal Activity tickets from £29 at LOVEtheatre

Make sure you also check out our Into the Woods review.