I would like to complain to whomever he calls idiota hidden gem of a 10-episode sci-fi series from 2018. Yeah, I realize it’s loosely based on Norwegian series of the same name, but the title kept me away for far too long. Title Maniac is also an unrated 1980 slasher film with Notorious creepy sticker A serial killer appears with a bloody scalp, and no no no no I’m not watching that.
This lunatic on Netflix is not going there. It’s a psychological sci-fi series that mixes laughs and tears, featuring an all-star cast (Jonah Hill! Emma Stone! Sally Field! Julia “Ozark” Garner!) and one of the most twisted and convoluted plots I’ve seen in a while. and its ending, with a twist reminiscent of The Graduate, lifted me up, making me feel these two very strange people I was so fond of might, might, might have a future.
Let’s start from the beginning. Crazy came out in 2018, and It was well reviewed at the timeBut somehow I totally missed it. It’s set in a parallel-universe New York City that’s recognizable enough, but filled with enough bizarre Black Mirror-style sci-fi twists to keep things interesting.
For one thing, New York now boasts something called the Statue of Liberty snap-in. There is a company called AdBuddy that buys you stuff in exchange for letting someone sit next to you and read ads (the popup ad from hell). There’s something called an A-void pod, almost like a dog kennel for humans, where those who are tired of the world can fall back on it all. A concept called FriendProxy lets you hire imaginary friends. These things aren’t always explained accurately, they kind of exist, and viewers figure it out quickly, or they don’t.
Jonah Hill plays Owen Milgrim (yes, a nod to Milgram experiment, A famous psychological experiment where people follow orders, even if they think they are harming others). He suffers from schizophrenia, not helped by his horrible, rich family, who want him to lie on the stand at his brother’s upcoming brutal sexual assault trial. Emma Stone plays Annie Landsberg, who suffers from borderline personality disorder. Annie has suffered a terrible family loss in her past, and like Owen, she is a broken person living in a shattered future world.
Owen and Annie team up to be the guinea pigs in a large pharmaceutical company’s trial of a drug that is supposed to end human suffering. One of the steps to do this involves taking a pill (called the A pill) that takes you back to the most painful event in your life. he is a boy. It’s one thing to let someone throw ads in your face on the subway, but it’s quite another to go back to the most devastating moment in your life.
Birth control pills are part of the test. The B-type pill sends its takers to a fully realized other life, where they might be con artists, or a couple looking for lemurs (this makes sense in context). Pill C provides more hallucinatory lives, including that of a Hobbity half-elf for Annie, and throws Owen into a bloody mob family.
All of these branching and rambling plots make Maniac the kind of show you need to pay close attention to. If you get distracted by scrolling through your phone, you’ll suddenly look at the screen and wonder if you accidentally sat down at the remote control and switched to a Sopranos ring, or a Lord of the Rings-like flick.
But if you can stay focused — and 10 episodes is a big commitment — Maniac rewards its dedicated viewers. Stone and Hill are charming, plus they’re backed by an all-star cast including Field, Theroux, and Garner.
In Maniac’s world, people can opt out of life in something called an A-void pod, which does exactly what the name implies… helps them avoid life. This is Hank Azaria, of The Simpsons fame, in the window.
Netflix
Theroux (in a moppy wig) is an absorbing freak as Dr. James Mantleray. His character was fired from the drug trial department, but was brought back out of desperation. (Dr. Azumi Fujita stars in Sonoya Mizuno as his chain-smoking partner.) Mantleray’s mother turns out to be the famous therapist Dr. Greta Mantleray, and her voice and personality have been programmed into GRTA, the computer on which the experiment is based. Family trauma, whether of the scientists or those involved in drug trials, is as much a part of this show as the futuristic inventions that make Annie and Owen’s world a little unsettling.
Maniac is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who you may know as the director of the most recent Bond movie, No time to die, for which he won an Emmy Award for directing the first season of True Detective. And if you’re a fan of True Detective, The OA, or newer The Supernatural Steamship Series 1899you will most likely find a cool geek.
But it is not for everyone. I can totally see where some viewers would get impatient, as the show spends entire episodes rambling through the different lives Owen and Annie lead while under the influence of drugs. It could easily have been a five-episode series instead. However, I felt as though I had dug up a lost treasure from the Netflix vault. I will be thinking about Stone and Hill and their strange and wild world for a long time.
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