Cinema from the Spectrum

There are movies that you basically watch and your mind is blown; Dance Freak is exactly one of those movies. I have to admit that for about the first ten or fifteen minutes, the film struggles to get going. I also came into this film knowing nothing about Baltimore’s Wham City Comedy Collective, but it is directed and written by two of its former members, Alan Resnick and Robby Rackleff. Along the way, the film is backed up by three major alt-comedy stars in Stavros Halkias, Conner O’Malley, and Saturday Night Live‘s Sarah Sherman.

I have to be honest with you, it’s hard to understand what this film is exactly about because it’s so manic and jittery. It feels like David Lynch wandered onto the set of a Tim & Eric sketch, and nobody ever yelled cut. The film has a horror element, and that comes from the title itself. The Dance Freak is essentially the double of a man named Obie (Rackleff), a bizarre dancing figure who leaves a trail of bodies behind by somehow making people either explode or deflate. I swear to you, that is actually the plot.

Obie spends the film stumbling from one bizarre encounter to the next, whether he’s being attacked by birds, crossing paths with the Salad Boys, or walking past campaign posters urging everyone to “Vote Dorty!” The film never pauses to explain any of it. Instead, it simply keeps piling absurdity on top of absurdity until you either buy into its wavelength or completely bounce off it.

Speaking of Dorty, Megan Koester plays the club-wielding would-be politician who marches around with an enormous wooden club while claiming she’s going to “clean up this town.” She also happens to be Obie’s girlfriend, although their relationship is clearly on shaky ground. Trying to explain this movie makes it sound like I made the whole thing up, but I promise every word of it is true.

What makes Dance Freak work more often than not is that nobody involved seems remotely interested in winking at the audience. Every bizarre interaction is played with complete sincerity, and that’s what makes the comedy land. The film constantly escalates from one ridiculous idea to another without ever stopping to explain itself, asking you to surrender to its insanity rather than question it. Once I accepted that, I found myself laughing a lot more. 

There’s also a lot of weird, random stuff throughout that somehow ends up being hilarious. The film really starts to take off when Stavros Halkias enters the frame. He brings a manic energy to his character, Megaman (no, not the video game character), and his awkward shouting and line delivery keep your eyes on him whenever he’s on screen. I also cannot begin to tell you how funny it is to watch him smash up drugs with a mallet while sitting beside a sex worker. It’s easily one of the biggest laughs in the entire movie.

The other strong performance comes from Sheila Mears, who plays Top Secret Scientist Dr. Dilly Gorgul (yes, that’s actually her name, and the film flashes it on screen multiple times just to make sure you don’t forget it). It’s less something Mears herself does to make the name memorable than one of the film’s funniest idiosyncratic running jokes: “Dr. Dilly Gorgul” is already such an inherently silly collection of sounds that repeatedly plastering it across the screen turns the character’s name into a punchline of its own. Mears wisely plays along with the absurdity rather than overselling it. 

This is one of those films where it’s hard to even figure out what kind of rating you want to give it. Like most absurdist comedies, it’s a bit hit-and-miss. Some jokes drift by without much impact, but when the film lands one, it lands hard. There were several moments where I was laughing so hard I could barely believe what I was watching. Dance Freak isn’t interested in making conventional sense, and that’s exactly the point. It’s chaotic, bizarre, occasionally frustrating, but ultimately a film that’s completely committed to its own brand of insanity. If your sense of humour is wired for that kind of absurdity, you’ll probably have a great time.

Watch the trailer right here.

All images via Complete Inverse.

Directed by Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick
Screenplay by Robby Rackleff
Produced by Allen Cordell, Graham High, Robby Rackleff, Alan Resnick, James Trevor
Starring Robby Rackleff, Megan Koester, Sheila Mears, Jamel Johnson, Ron Lynch, David Rhodus, Stavros Halkias, Sarah Sherman, Conner O’Malley, Annie Donley, Jared Larson
Premiere Date: September 27, 2025
Running Time: 97 minutes