Have you ever got up to nonsense at school, and then been forced to sit before the principal, who was waiting for you to explain yourself?

That’s the vibe I get from watching Emma Stone and Jonah Hill – the latter who’s looking on the trim side after shedding the kilos – staring each other down in this bizarre teaser for Netflix’s new series, Maniac.

Of course, the plot of this 10-episode series is far more complex – and creepy – than that.

Rolling Stone has got the deets:

Set in a world somewhat like our world, in a time quite similar to our time, Maniac tells the stories of Annie Landsberg (Emma Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Jonah Hill), two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial, each for their own reasons.

Annie’s disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and her sister; Owen, the fifth son of wealthy New York industrialists, has struggled his whole life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Neither of their lives has turned out quite right, and the promise of a new, radical kind of pharmaceutical treatment — a sequence of pills its inventor, Dr James K. Mantleray (Justin Theroux), claims can repair anything about the mind, be it mental illness or heartbreak — draws them and 10 other strangers to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug trial that will, they’re assured, with no complications or side effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently.

Things do not go as planned.

I’m sure it doesn’t at all.

Here’s the first taste of things to come:

“Confuzzling” doesn’t even begin to describe how offbeat this teaser is.

You’ve got admit, though, it does look worth the watch for Stone and Hill’s staring contest alone.

Maniac will be out on September 21.

[source:rollingstone]