Why Stavros Halkias Is the Best Part of ‘Let’s Start a Cult’

Photo: Stavros Halkias via YouTube

Let’s create a cult opens on grainy dashcam footage of suicide cult members being interviewed about why they believe they’re “ready to get out.” They take turns telling their off-camera leader William (Wes Haney) about the profound lessons they’ve learned from him as they prepare for their big day. “This tree we’re on is on fire and telling us to get down,” says one stoically. “I know in my heart that we should be so much more,” says another. Cut to Chip, played by a comedian Stavros HalkiasBaltimore accent in full effect: “Thanks to your training, I convinced a Chinese woman with dementia that I was her son,” he says. “I got about $13,000 from her before she realized I didn’t really know how to speak Mandarin; I was just making sounds.” At the bottom of the screen, the recording of the interview is marked May 24, 2000.

If this were an accurate piece of the time, Chip would have cast the woman in anything other than color rather than simply saying he made the “sounds,” but his dirty irreverence is a throwback to the comedies of the era nonetheless. Let’s create a cult shares some DNA with 2004 Dodgeball because of its nonsensical plot uniting a ragtag group and 2004s Napoleon Dynamite in the way his comedy flows freely from the quirks of his failed characters. It even has a 2000s comedy sex scene Road trip or the 1999s American pie. It’s very silly, like the character comedies that were popular before Judd Apatow’s humanist stories influenced almost every comedy that was greenlit, to the tipping point in the industry where even those stopped being made.

Directed by Ben Kitnick, who co-wrote the film with Halkias and Haney, the story Let’s create a cult Shabby by Design : Annoyed by his disgusting behavior, Chip’s cult performs their poisoning ritual without him, setting off a chain of events where a defeated Chip returns to his parents’ house, sees on the news that William is still alive, and goes on the run from the law, tracking him down and blackmails him to help create a new cult. Their subsequent recruiting trip, which forms the bulk of the film, is little more than an excuse to introduce a gang of lovable weirdos and drop them off at various locations where they can exchange casual, improvised dialogue and crack jokes.

This is how we end up in the apartment of rejected military candidate Tyler (Eric Rayhill), whom William correctly assumes is a vulnerable target to be drawn to; Chip and Tyler play Nintendo 64 while Tyler’s fiancee, played by Zuri Salahuddin (“You can’t call someone your fiancee if they say no!”), engages in loud cameo animal sex Joe Pera in the next room. We also get a slow motion montage that reminds gas station scene in Zoolander where Chip, William, Tyler and cult recruit Diane (Katie Fullan) paint a car with homemade paint; it ends with Chip whimsically throwing a bucket of paint in William’s eye and nearly blinding him. as other should they disguise their car from the cops other than messily and conspicuously repaint it blue?

At the heart of it all is Halkias as Chip, who milks every line for all it’s worth, infusing it with the perfect mix of haughty man-child animosity and bruised ego. In one scene, he tries to repeat the obvious lie he told his parents to explain why he disappeared from their lives to join the cult: “The last time, Mom, I trained to be a karate champion in Tokyo, but it was the day before the big championship my sensei betrayed me and stole my beautiful girl Akiko. I was too broken to fight and so I lost! Doesn’t anyone in this house listen to me?!” In another scene, he drives himself crazy recounting the outcome of a professional wrestling match 19 years ago, and laments, “My God, it was rigged!”

You don’t have to squint too hard at Halkias’ performance to see the echoes Danny McBridewhose work is an obvious reference point in the construction of Chip. Like Fred Simmons The way of the fistChip’s misstatement functions as a subtle commentary on the absurdity of masculinity, and none of his charisma attacks go far enough to make you lose sight of the fact that the joke is on him. (The same can’t be said for the comedy in Shane Gillis’ Netflix sitcom Tiresin which Halkias also appeared this year.) But there is also a pathos to the character that lightens his sickening business. Sometimes he is just a minor, but just as often he acts out of insecurity, an inability to deal with his emotions, or a desperate desire to communicate. That’s why the end of the film, when Chip finds a loving home with his cult recruits who have become friends, is so heartfelt. As much as you want to hang out with this guy, it’s nice to see him win.

In his 2018 Master ClassApatow discussed the value of writing comedies as dramas, then work backwards to introduce jokes. “It really doesn’t help to think of these stories as comedic,” he said. “The problem with a lot of comedies is that they primarily serve a comedic premise and don’t really have a reason to exist.” His films were constantly criticized for being too long and ambitious. Let’s make a cult meanwhile, takes the opposite approach: starting with a comic premise, then backtracking to introduce drama. He has no reason to exist other than as a vehicle for jokes, and that’s all the better for him.