Maniac: Netflix Releases Fantastic Full Trailer For Cary Joji Fukunaga Series

The first full trailer for Maniac has officially landed.

After titillating audiences with a cryptic, colorful, confrontational teaser, Netflix has finally released a first real look at the secretive, long-awaited project from director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Check the trailer out for yourself up above.

The trailer is fantastical in every sense of the word, portraying impossible situations and transporting its characters to literal fantasy worlds, including one sequence that looks straight out of The Lord of the Rings. 

Considering Fukunaga's track record as the director behind the arresting first season of HBO's True Detective — as well as his work on the uncompromising, Idris Elba-starring Netflix movie Beasts of No Nation — we're not surprised that this thing appears to be a visual feast. We are, however, pretty happy to finally be seeing what's in store for us with this.

The trailer introduces the series' premise of a mysterious medical experiment involving several volunteers under the supervision of Justin Theroux's Dr. Mantleray. Participants in the medical trial — including Jonah Hill as the schizophrenic Owen and Emma Stone as the dissociative Annie — are given experimental treatments that seem to transform their senses of place and their senses of self. 

The trailer also establishes that this surreal treatment might, uh, not really work all that well.

According to the good doctor, the purpose of the experiment is to destroy pain and "solve" the mind, taking people with mental illness through an imaginative gauntlet and depositing them on the other side somehow cured. We'll see how that works out for everyone.

There's a lot to dig into with this trailer, which hearkens back somewhat to the Michel Gondry movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as the characters break their way out of surreal setpieces for the sake of finding each other, against the wishes of the people in charge. Somewhere along the line, something about the experiment breaks — and we kind of can't wait to see what the damage turns out to be.

A limited series, Maniac is an adaptation of a Norwegian series of the same name, and has previously been described as a black comedy in tone. In addition to Stone, Hill, and Theroux, the series also features performances from Sally Field, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Magnussen, and Sonoya Mizuno.

Maniac will premiere on Netflix on September 21.