NewzNEW YORK (AP) — Movie producer Jason Blum, who has revolutionized the modern horror genre, gets invited, as you might expect, to tons of plays billed as scary. “Everyone is always saying if you could make a play and give the audience the feeling they have in a horror movie, it would be an amazing thing,” he says. Blum, whose Blumhouse has produced everything from “Get Out” to “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” estimates he’s gone to see 25 such plays, and 24 times “they come off goofy or you’re not scared at all.” That changed with his 25th — an adaptation of his “Paranormal Activity” franchise.
“I’ve never seen a play that’s made me scared ever and these guys pulled it off,” says Blum. “That they were able to make an audience feel like you felt when you watch the movie, I just couldn’t believe it.” What’s the play about? The play, which has made its way through London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Toronto and Boston, is now on Broadway and is creeping out critics and audiences alike.
It’s the story of a newly married couple who have relocated from Chicago to London and find strange things going on in their quirky new home, straining their loyalties and sanity and defying science. The stage play — without film’s benefit of cutaways, close-ups or jump scares — still makes audiences scream with quite simple effects: a TV flickering, candles getting snuffed out, shadows appearing and blankets mysteriously getting pulled. “I think the lack of big effects actually makes it feel much more grounded and scarier and more real,” says Blum, who knows a thing or two about horror effects: He was off-camera on the floor pulling a sheet off a bed with strings during the filming of the first “Paranormal Activity” movie.
Variety said the play “delivers more thrills, chills and screams than Broadway has seen in years” and Entertainment Weekly called it “two hours and 20 minutes of hair-raising, heart-pounding, and blood-curdling horror mixed with a dash of unexpected heart and humor.” Blum credits playwright Levi Holloway, director Felix Barrett and illusion designer Chris Fisher with bringing horror to the stage, a traditionally tricky place for it. How the team approached this stage horror Broadway has pulled off eerie recently — Fisher delivered thrillingly with “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and “Stranger Things: T… He opened his wallet and invested.How the team approached this stage horrorBroadway has pulled off eerie recently — Fisher delivered thrillingly with “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” and “Stranger Things: The First Sha…
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