Why Stavros Chalkias is the best part of Let’s Create a Cult

Photo: Stavros Chalkias via YouTube

Let’s create a cult opens on grainy footage of suicide cult members being interviewed about why they believe they are “ready to transcend.” One by one, they tell their off-screen leader William (Wes Haney) about the profound lessons they learned from him as they prepared for their big day. “The tree we are sitting on is burning and demands that we get down,” one of them says stoically. “I know deep down that we are destined to be something more,” says another. Cut to Chip, played by a comedian Stavros ChalkiasBaltimore accent in full force: “Thanks to your teachings, I convinced a Chinese woman suffering from dementia that I was her son,” he says. “I got about $13,000 from her before she realized I couldn’t actually speak Chinese; I was just making sounds.” At the bottom of the screen, the recording of the interview is marked as May 24, 2000.

If this were an accurate period piece, Chip would have portrayed this woman in an unconventional way rather than just saying he was “making noises,” but his dirtbag irreverence nonetheless serves as a throwback to the comedy films of the era. Let’s create a cult has some similar DNA to 2004 bouncers through a reckless plot that brings together a ragtag group and Napoleon Dynamite in the way his comedy flows freely from the quirks of his misfit characters. There’s even a comedic sex scene, very 2000s style. Drive or 1999s American Pie. It’s deeply stupid, like the character-driven comedies that were popular before Judd Apatow’s humanistic stories influenced almost every greenlit comedy film, before the industry hit a turning point 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 by design shaggy: Annoyed by his disgusting behavior, Chip’s cult carries out their poisoning ritual without him, which sets off a series of events as a defeated Chip returns to his parents’ house, sees on the news that William is still alive, and, on the run from the law, tracks him down and blackmails him into helping him found a new cult. Their subsequent recruiting trip, which makes up most of the film, is nothing more than an excuse to introduce a gang of charming oddballs and place them in various locations where they can exchange freewheeling, improvised dialogue and engage in wild entertainment.

That’s how we find ourselves in the apartment of rejected army candidate Tyler (Eric Rahill), who William correctly surmises is a soft target worth bringing in; Chip and Tyler play on the Nintendo 64 while Tyler’s not-fiancée, played by Zuri Salahuddin (“You can’t call someone your fiancée if they say no!”), has a loud cameo of animal sex. Joe Pera in the next room. Also in this way we get a slow montage, reminiscent of gas station scene Zoolander where Chip, William, Tyler and new cult recruit Diane (Katie Fullan) paint a car with house paint; it ends with Chip bizarrely throwing a bucket of paint at William’s eye and nearly blinding him. How more should they hide their car from the cops except by randomly and conspicuously repainting it blue?

At the center of it all is Halkias as Chip, who wrings every line out of every line, imbuing it with the perfect combination of smug man-child irritability and bruised ego. In one scene, he tries to repeat an obvious lie he told his parents to explain why he disappeared from their lives to join a cult: “Last time, Mom, I was training to become 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, so I lost! Is no one listening to me in this house?! In another scene, he works himself into a frenzy by recounting the outcome of a professional wrestling match that happened 19 years ago, lamenting, “God, this thing was rigged!”

You don’t have to squint too hard watching Halkias perform to see echoes of Danny McBridewhose work is an obvious reference point in the construction of Chip. Like Fred Simmons in The path of the fist with the footChip’s misguided bluster acts as a subtle commentary on the ridiculousness of masculinity, and none of his stabs at charisma ever reach the point of making you lose sight of the fact that the joke is on him. (The same can’t be said for the comedy in Shane Gillies’ Netflix sitcom. Tiresin which Chalkias also appeared this year.) But there’s also a pathos to the character that makes his sickening case easier to stomach. Sometimes he’s just a young bully, but just as often he acts out of insecurity, an inability to deal with his emotions, or a desperation to connect. That’s why the film’s ending, when Chip finds a loving home with his cult recruits turned friends, conveys genuine heart. As much as you’d love to hang out with this guy, it’s nice to see him get a win.

In his 2018 Master ClassApatow discussed the value of writing comedies as dramas. then working backwards to introduce the jokes. “It doesn’t really help to think of these stories as comedies,” 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 create a cult Meanwhile, it takes the opposite approach: it starts with a comic premise and then moves backwards to introduce drama. It has no reason to exist other than as a vehicle for jokes, and that’s all the better for it.