Will Netflix’s MANIAC Series Starring Jonah Hill & Emma Stone Be Horror?
Mike Sprague
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“Do you know where you are?”
Recently we were passed along the trailer and promotional materials for Netflix’s upcoming limited series Maniac starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill. You can check out the poster to the right and the recently released colorful-as-shit trailer below. But looking all of this through earlier this week has me wondering, “Will Netflix’s Maniac be Considered Horror?”
You may remember we recently did a similar post like this one back when HBO started promoting the 8-episode limited series Sharp Objects, based on the novel by Gillian Flynn and starring Amy Adams and Sophia Lillis (Stephen King’s IT). Back then I asked the question “Will it be Horror?” and we received enough interesting comments and thoughts that we decided to give the first two episodes of the season a look-see and find out the scoop. It turns out that series more than lean its gritty head towards horror, but will Netflix’s new limited series Maniac go the same route.
First off, let’s get a bit of business out of the way and let you guys know the details of the upcoming series. It’s created by Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers) who wrote a majority of the season’s ten episodes solo – with two episodes co-written by Mauricio Katz (The Bridge). The series is directed by Cary Fukunaga and it’s all set to debut globally today, September 21, only on Netflix.
The primary reason that I’m excited about this new series is that it’s directed by Fukunaga, who is best known for directing the masterpiece that was HBO’s 8-episode first season of True Detective written by Nick Pizzolato and starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. Let it be known that Fukunaga directed all eight episodes of the stellar first season – over the course of 100 crazy consecutive days – but he had nothing to do with the boring second season which starred Colin Farrel, Rachel McAdams, and Vince Vaughn. Just making sure you guys were aware of that fact.
Anyhow, Fukunaga is one of the best directors out there. He was just announced as director on the new James Bond film, but before that, he was attached to co-write and direct the 2-part adaptation of Stephen King’s IT. And while his version of the film ended up in development hell, he is still a credited writer (along with Chase Williams and Gary Dauberman) on the final project. And since we’re on the subject, his script for IT is out there so look for it, give it a read, and let us know what you think.
But back to the matter at hand, will Maniac be horror?
Well, the trailer (which, again, you can check out in all its strange glory below) seems to be a mixture of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Beyond the Black Rainbow. But there is a shift toward sci-fi horror-thriller in there as well. “It’s NOT therapy. It’s science” is a line we hear spat by Justin Theroux’s lead doctor somewhere in there, and if we’ve learned anything from sinister medical professional-peeps in movies (or this case TV shows) it’s that doctors who think like that are just asking for some good old body horror and mind-fuckery.
Plus, the trailer speaks about solving “The structure of the mind,” and if that doesn’t sound like a line from the Coen Brothers’ (almost) horror flick Barton Fink, I don’t know what to tell you. BUT… the trailer does bend towards comedy as well. The set design seems to be going for a more 70’s-style version of the future, and it can be taken as a little bit more than hokey. And there are some funny bits, such as the exchange “How many of your patients have gone into coma’s?” “Zero…,” Pause. “Roughly.”
One of the absolute highest reasons to think that this series is going to be more in the realms of indie-strange-romantic comedy, however, is, of course, the presence of Mrs. Emma Stone and Mr. Jonah Hill. These two actors are best known for comedies such as Easy A and 21 Jump Street (and even starred together in the classic teen sex-comedy Superbad), but I don’t think that automatically categorizes the series as a comedy. Hill and Stone are no stranger to our beloved genre, after all, they have starred in films such as This is the End and Zombieland, so their inclusion shouldn’t automatically scream comedy. Even if those two flicks mentioned above are horror-comedies.
Going back to the trailer itself, the musical score pulsing in the background throughout the latter half is almost that of an adventure film, and the trailer shows some Game of Thrones style sequences so… I don’t know what to make of any of this. Hence, I think the result will be a mind-fuck horror-thriller, kind of like Netflix’s other original series, Black Mirror. Do you consider Black Mirror to be horror? We do. On occasion.
And let’s not forget the fact that Netflix sent the press release for this upcoming series to horror movie sites. We don’t get press releases for the light romantic comedies that Netflix (or any other studio) puts out, so this may be the ultimate clue that Maniac will go to some dark-ass places within its 10 episode single season. But I guess we’ll see soon as the series airs all of its episodes globally on Netflix starting today, September 21st.
Do YOU think Netflix’s Maniac starring Jonah Hill and Emma Stone will ultimately be considered horror? Make sure to hit us up and let us know what you think in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram!
STREAM MANIAC HERE
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