Photo: Stavros Halkias via YouTube

Let’s start a cult opens with grainy camcorder footage of members of a suicide cult being questioned about why they believe they are “ready to transcend.” One by one, they tell their off-camera boss, William (Wes Haney), the profound lessons they learned from him in preparation for their big day. “This tree we’re on is burning and it’s telling us to get down,” one of them said stoically. “In my heart I know we are meant to be so much more,” says another. Cut to Chip, played by the actor Stavros Halkiasthe Baltimore accent in full effect: “Thanks to your teachings, I convinced the Chinese lady with dementia that I was her son,” he said. “I got about $13,000 from her before she realized I didn’t really know how to speak Mandarin; I was just kind of making the sounds. At the bottom of the screen, the recording timestamps the interview as May 24, 2000.

If this were a faithful period piece, Chip would be doing a quirky impersonation of this lady rather than just saying he made “the sounds,” but his dirtbag irreverence nonetheless serves as a throwback to the films comics of that time. Let’s start a cult shares some DNA with the 2004s Dodgeball through its wacky plot bringing together a motley group and the years 2004 Napoleon Dynamite in the way its comedy flows freely from the quirks of its loser characters. There’s even a comical sex scene like in the 2000s Road trip or the 1999s American pie. It’s profoundly silly, like the character-based comedies that were popular before Judd Apatow’s humanistic stories influenced almost every comedy film that got the green light, before the industry shift where even those -these have ceased to be carried out.

Directed by Ben Kitnick, who co-wrote the film alongside Halkias and Haney, the plot of Let’s start a cult is shaggy by design: annoyed by his obnoxious behavior, Chip’s cult performs their poison ritual without him, which sets off a series of events in which a defeated Chip returns to his parents, sees on the news that William is still in life and on the run from the law, finds him and blackmails him into helping him create a new sect. Their subsequent road trip to recruit new members, which constitutes the majority of the film, is little more than an excuse to introduce a gang of endearing weirdos and drop them off at various settings where they can exchange improvised dialogue and get going in great adventures.

Which is how we find ourselves in the apartment of rejected military hopeful Tyler (Eric Rahill), who William rightly assumes is a vulnerable target to bring into the fold; Chip and Tyler play Nintendo 64 while Tyler’s non-fiancée, played by Zuri Salahuddin (“You can’t call someone your fiancée if they say no!”), has loud, animalistic sex with a cameo. Joe Pera in the next room. This is also how we obtain a slow-motion montage reminiscent of the gas station scene in Zoolander where Chip, William, Tyler and new cult recruit Diane (Katy Fullan) paint a car with house paint; it ends with Chip fancifully throwing a bucket of paint in William’s eyes and nearly blinding him. How other are they supposed to hide their car from the cops in any way other than randomly and conspicuously repainting it baby blue?

At the center of it all is Halkias as Chip, who milks each line delivery for all its value by imbuing it with the perfect blend of man-child petulance bluster and wounded ego. In one scene, he attempts to reiterate the obvious lie he told his parents to explain why he had disappeared from their lives to join a cult: “For the last time, Mom, I was training to be a karate champion in Tokyo, but the day before the big championship, my sensei betrayed me and stole my beautiful girlfriend, Akiko. I was too heartbroken to fight, and that’s why I lost! Isn’t anyone listening to me in this house?!” In another scene, he begins talking frantically about the outcome of a professional wrestling match that happened 19 years earlier and laments, “My God, this Thing was faked!”

You don’t have to squint too hard while watching Halkias’ performance to see the echoes of Danny McBridewhose work constitutes an obvious reference in the construction of Chip. Like Fred Simmons in The way of the foot and the fistChip’s misguided bluster functions as a subtle commentary on the absurdities of masculinity, and none of his shots of charisma ever hit enough to make you lose sight of the fact that the joke is on him. (The same can’t be said for the comedy of Shane Gillis’ Netflix sitcom. Tires(which Halkias also appeared in this year.) But there’s also a pathos to the character that makes his queasy agreement easier to digest. Sometimes he’s just a youthful braggart, but just as often he’s acting out of insecurity, an inability to manage his emotions, or a desperate desire to connect. That’s why the end of the film, when Chip finds a loving home with his cult recruits-turned-friends, expresses genuine heart. Even if you wouldn’t want to spend time with this guy, it’s nice to see him win.

In his 2018 Master ClassApatow discussed the value of writing comedies as dramas, SO work backwards to introduce jokes. “It really doesn’t help to think of these stories as comedy stories,” he said. “The problem with a lot of comedies is that they primarily serve a comic premise and don’t really have a reason to exist.” His films have been regularly criticized for being too long and ambitious. Let’s start a sect, meanwhile, he takes the opposite approach: he begins with a comedic premise, then works backwards to introduce drama. It has no other reason to exist than to convey jokes, and that’s a good thing.