One of the year’s most hotly anticipated films, Ben Affleck’s “Animals” arrives on Netflix this fall. And we’ve got the first trailer. Watch it below.

In “Animals,” based on a buzzy Black List script by Connor O. McIntyre and rewritten by Billy Ray and Affleck, the director/actor plays a mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped. He and his wife (Kerry Washington) then “find themselves drawn into a web of deception. As they scramble to raise the ransom payment, they’re forced to make choices that could tear their world apart,” according to the official synopsis.

The trailer is super tense, recalling to mind things like Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low” (and to a lesser degree Spike Lee’s recent remake “Highest 2 Lowest”), highlighting the absolutely star-studded cast, which includes Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, Christopher Woodley, Matt Gerald, Jacob Estrada, Luis Gerardo Méndez and Steven Yeun.

“Animals” marks the second collaboration between Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity and Netflix, after “The Rip,” which was released earlier this year. (Artists Equity is a company whose business model gives bonuses to every person who worked on the movie, not just the above-the-line talent or flashy producers. With Netflix, the bonuses are delivered after a certain number of views are accrued.) Brad Weston, Collin Creighton, Dani Bernfeld and Luciana Damon also produce. Legendary cinematographer Robert Elswit shot “Animals.”

Originally, Affleck was just meant to co-write and direct, with Damon starring in the mayoral candidate role. But when Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” pulled up to shore, Damon could not resist the siren song of re-teaming with him, so Affleck stepped in as replacement. At one point, Jennifer Garner, Affleck’s real-life ex-wife, was also meant to star in the Washington role.

“Animals” arrives in select theaters and on Netflix on Oct. 9.

Here is an incomplete list of phrases used to describe Frankie (Kristen Stewart) and/or Molly (Alia Shawkat) over the course of The Wrong Girls: Drunk dingbat. Hot-ass mess. Weird bimbos. Disposable human subjects. Dumb turkeys, dumb as rocks, dumb bitches.

In short, no one who encounters them is impressed by their capability or their intelligence, not even their own cats, and the only souls who seem to fully believe in them are one another.

But as anyone who’s ever texted their bestie the “It’s always 2 dumb bitches telling each other exactlyyyy” meme can attest, there can be great delight to be found in being utterly foolish with a likeminded friend. Proudly stupid and surprisingly sweet, Dylan Meyer’s stoner buddy comedy is a tribute to friendship best enjoyed with your own ride-or-die by your side — joints optional.

To call Molly and Frankie aimless would be, somehow, both understating the case and missing it completely.

On one hand, Frankie is a college dropout who spends her days hotboxing around Los Angeles while occasionally also delivering packages. Molly has some freelance gig involving spreadsheets, but really reserves her energy for dreaming up flavor combos only a stoner could love: brownies studded with blue cheese, raspberry smoothies swirled with toothpaste. With their combined paychecks, they’re thousands of dollars in debt, and quickly falling behind on rent.

On the other, it’s hard to look around their apartment — impeccably cramped and dirtied by production designer Katie Hickman — and not conclude these women are living their best lives, by their own off-kilter standards. The living room is overtaken by Frankie’s proudest creation, an enormous Rube Goldberg-ian device dubbed the Bong-o-Tron. The TV is mounted on the ceiling, all the better for spacing out to nature docs while lying under a thick cloud of smoke. The Casa de Chill Zone, as they call it, is a pothead paradise.

But the mellow vibes are ruined when a goofy case of mistaken identity results in Frankie coming home with a briefcase containing several vials of a glowing orange goo. From that moment on, they find themselves at the center of a global conspiracy involving a world-changing scientific discovery, an evil corporation, federal agents and a very handsome undercover known to them as “Not Metalhead Dave” (Lakeith Stanfield), for the disguise he dons the first time he meets Frankie.

Not that Molly and Frankie realize this, at least right away. The Wrong Girls channels in equal measure the amiable shagginess of stoner classics like Smiley Face and Pineapple Express and the sunny ditziness of female friendship comedies like Dick or Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar. As in all those movies, the leads’ total cluelessness is part of the charm. Indifferent to the mystery of the substance — at least until they’ve swigged enough to determine they could sell it to rich idiots as a new party psychedelic — the gals are more concerned with matters like the impending closure of their favorite all-you-can-eat joint or Frankie’s hatred of Molly’s perfectly nice boyfriend, Josh (Zack Fox).

They’re oblivious to the gun-toting, hand-sanitizer-addicted henchmen trailing their every move until the shooting starts, and clueless once it does as to why all of this is happening. Though explanations don’t seem to help much, either: Even as they’re whisked before the scientist (Kate McKinnon) whose invention has started this whole mess, she can barely get a word out before Frankie and Molly are tuning her out, giggling over the fact that the big bad villain’s name is “Dr. Kock” or wondering why people from Holland are called “Dutch” and not “Hollish.”

Shawkat and Stewart are both effortlessly charming, and it’s particularly fun to see Stewart cut loose in an honest-to-god comedy. They share the lived-in chemistry of two people so in sync they’re practically speaking their own private language — and that’s before they ingest the chemical that might give them psychic powers for real. The Wrong Girls is slight in everything from its runtime (100 minutes) to its emotions (mostly chill), but Meyer packs their connection with enough backstory and texture to give it real heft. This is no casual acquaintanceship but a soul-deep bond capable of weathering any storm or earthquake or hail of bullets life might throw its way.

When they’re egging each other on, the fact that they’ve never made a normal and logical decision in their lives — even when they’re tasked with something as straightforward as finding dresses for a party, costume designer Heidi Bivens clothes them instead in repurposed Hefty bags — becomes not a weakness but a strength. “I have tracked CIA agents with more predictable movements than these girls,” one henchman remarks as the girls drunkenly stumble down an empty road, contemptuous but maybe also a tiny bit impressed.

And their friendship, a folie à deux spiral of insane ideas powered by ungodly quantities of pot, becomes akin to a superpower. It’s the sort of connection so tight it’s impenetrable to everyone else; all bemused outsiders like Not Metalhead Dave can do is sit back and wonder, “How did these girls happen to me?” But we’ve spent enough time basking in the warmth of their love to know that you can do anything at all when you’re lucky enough to have a friend who’ll look you straight in the bloodshot eye and let you know that you’re not the loser — it’s the rest of the world that lacks your imagination.

Every great stoner movie is about what you’d be doing right now if you weren’t stoned. Or at least what you’d be doing if you were stoned and willing to leave the house. Classic films like “The Big Lebowski,” “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and various Cheech and/or Chong adventures depict the world as an absurdly eventful place where little problems quickly transform into epic adventures, and the only way to save the day is to get even more zonked.

Dylan Meyer’s “The Wrong Girls” is probably a new stoner classic. I don’t know, I haven’t watched it while high yet, but I suspect it’s been performance-tested under those optimal conditions. (Kids? Leave serious film criticism to the professionals; don’t try this at home.) It’s a profoundly ridiculous movie where anything can happen if it’s funny, starring two top flight actors who are eager to embrace the absurd.

Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat are Frankie and Molly, two potheads who live with their cats GG and Dio and are pretty sure they solved climate change while they were wasted the other night. Frankie dropped out of an ivy league college and now she uses her engineering genius to build Rube Goldberg super bongs. Molly is an incredible chef with a boyfriend Frankie hates, because he wants to move in with Molly and Frankie fears change. She’s also afraid of success and afraid her ex-boyfriend is moving on with a girl who looks just like her, also played by Kristen Stewart.

Frankie is in no danger of success, but Molly moving out and her boyfriend moving on with a lookalike? That’s actually happening. But then, in a twist right out of “North By Northwest” (but 30% wackier), Frankie comes into possession of a mysterious package, delivered by a mercenary whose name she can’t remember. All she knows is he’s not a metal head so she calls him Not Metal Head Dave (LaKeith Stanfield). The package has a bunch of glowing super drugs inside and, since Frankie and Molly can’t make rent, they decide to sell this secret stash. But they don’t know what it does so they dilute a small amount in water and test it out, extremely carefully.

Just kidding. They shotgun it. Their cats even lick some off the floor, which in real life would be a bad thing (just like shotgunning bottles of unknown pharmaceuticals). But in “The Wrong Girls,” it means they all get psychic powers. Now they can read each other’s minds — GG and Dio sound just like Kumail Nanjiani and Seth Rogen (what are the odds?) — and they’re pretty sure they can move solid objects. Sometimes. Maybe. If weed is involved.

Now they’re at the center of an international conspiracy between foreign nationals, mad scientists, the FBI and a cabal of European assassins. And to think, all this might have happened to you if you’d simply left the house instead of watching Gregg Araki’s “Smiley Face” again while getting toasted.

“The Wrong Girls” is 100% nonsense and that’s what makes it perfect. Well, perfect for a stoner comedy. Every silly thing that could possibly happen must, inevitably, happen. Fortunately for all of us, Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat are in almost every scene, slaying the nonsensical dialogue and gesticulating wildly at the slightest provocation. Stewart seems particularly liberated by this chance to go full clown-mode — almost everything she says or does is amusing, adorable or slightly annoying but in an adorably amusing way.

That’s the other thing about stoner movies: They don’t work if the audience wouldn’t want to smoke out with the protagonists. Stewart and Shawkat make a compelling case that they belong in any blunt rotation. They’re comic dynamos with grumpy pet cats, a pocketful of weed brownies (secret ingredient: blue cheese) and an extremely sensible obsession with Céline Dion. If you don’t love Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat in “The Wrong Girls,” you probably don’t know what love is. Or maybe you just have different taste in stoner comedies. I guess anything’s possible.

Smart filmmakers make the best stupid comedies, and Dylan Meyer is a smart filmmaker. “The Wrong Girls” always looks like it’s veering out of control but Meyer knows where she’s going and how to get us there. She also knows we’re probably high as hell and we want to take the scenic route. So off we all pop on this wild, wild trip, with wonderful characters, a goofy sense of humor and what the heck, a psychic dance number. Fun Fact: You could improve literally any movie with a psychic dance number, but most filmmakers are too cowardly to try.

The ball’s in your court [picks random Oscar-nominated director out of a hat] … Denis Villeneuve. Go on. I dare you.