'The Alienist' Trailer Looks Like Victorian ‘True Detective’
It's got all the horror, dread, and mystery you've been searching for.
Fans of HBO’s True Detective, who yearn for another existential horror/mystery, may be in luck. Cary Fukunaga, director of the show’s acclaimed first season, is the executive producer of The Alienist, a new series that will premiere later this year on TNT. Starring Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans, and Daniel Brühl (Captain America: Civil War), The Alienist is set in 1890’s New York City and follows a criminal psychologist who teams up with a newspaper cartoonist and a police secretary to investigate a serial killer targeting underage boy prostitutes.
TNT released a new trailer on Wednesday, and while it looks structurally befitting of the cable network, there’s plenty of prestige-level dread, nihilism, and horror throughout the spooky streets of post-Industrial Revolution New York.
The Alienist, which was adapted from Caleb Carr’s 1994 novel of the same name, derives its title from an archaic term for psychologists that hasn’t been used since the mid-twentieth century. The term is still sometimes used to describe forensic psychologists who evaluate defendants in criminal court cases.
Fukunaga, who also directed Beasts of No Nation, was set to direct The Alienist until he was replaced by Jakob Verbruggen, who has directed episodes of House of Cards and Black Mirror. (Fukunaga remained on The Alienist as executive producer.) Fukunaga will next helm a new dark comedy series for Netflix called Maniac, starring Jonah Hill and Emma Stone.
Check out the trailer for The Alienist below.
