“Maniac” on Netflix is Worth Your Time.

“Maniac”

A new Netflix Original Series has dropped and it’s definitely worth giving it a go. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga who was responsible for the critically acclaimed series True Detective, “Maniac” provides a glimpse into a life living with mental illness. A brief overview of the plot is  this. Annie Landsberg(Emma Stone) and Owen Milgrim(Jonah Hill) are two strangers who are drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial. Each has a different reason for participating in the experiment — she is disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and sister, while he has struggled throughout his life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. The radical treatment, using pills that the inventor claims can repair anything about the mind, draws Annie, Owen and 10 other subjects into a three-day drug trial that they’re told will permanently solve all of their problems, with no complications or side effects. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned.

Layers

The show has many different levels to each episode, likely in an attempt to demonstrate the many layers of the subconscious and mind. This certainly is not a show that you can watch while phone in hand facebooking. It’s jam packed with symbolism and intricacies involving depp constructs of the mind, so pay attention. It’s not quite as abstract as FX’s “Legion” which goes way beyond a “head trip”. I wanna say it’s a great show, but I just simply can’t absorb it. But Maniac does a great job of journeying into the mind while keeping it relatively simple at the same time. Another great aspect to the show is the way they portray the 80’s cyber punk era. As an 80’s kid, I thoroughly enjoyed the stroll down memory lane. The acting by Stone and Hill are as to be expected with such high calibers artists. Hill has fully embodied the depressed and disenfranchised with greatly subtlety, as the couple traverse mental plaines and time periods. From an 80’s New Jersey middle class couple, to 40’s upscale socialites to two actually do have great chemistry together.