“It’s like hygiene. Either you smell good or you don’t. Either you’re krump or you’re not.”

On first look, Rize is certainly a film to approach with caution: a documentary about a new hip-hop dance movement directed by a fashion photographer/music video director definitely sets off the ‘vapid’ alarm bell. But even though David LaChapelle’s Rize, a film about the ‘krump’ movement of dance birthed in L.A. and its roots in the city, suffers from some flashiness over substance, it remains fully convincing and engrossing not only because of the visually astounding dancing itself, but also the quite stark and powerful intensity of the people behind the dancing.

We are introduced to a world apparently quite pervasive in inner-city Los Angeles (but completely unbeknownst to this writer, and I would guess much of the film’s audience, which adds to the wonder) first through meeting its founder, the ‘ghetto celebrity’ Tommy the Clown. A reformed drug dealer who began appearing as a ‘hip-hop clown’ at kid’s birthday parties in the early 90s, Tommy was intrigued by the identity he created, one wholly separate from the problems of violence, gangs and drugs that pervade his neighborhood and many just like it. His ‘Clown Academy’, which took in troubled kids and channeled their energies into performing (most notably dancing) evolved into a whole social structure—we see footage of kids with elaborately painted faces, in full clown costumes, walking around South Central with nobody around blinking an eye.

From ‘clowning’ came ‘krumping’, which places less emphasis on entertainment and more on a kind of powerful therapeutic group session of dancing. At the start of the film we are told that none of the footage has been sped up, and it’s easy to see why. We are shown people dancing so quickly, so bizarrely, we might assume that they are possessed, or on drugs, or in the grip of some seizure, or all three. This is the true appeal of LaChapelle’s film: his raw, primal footage of large groups of people dancing with no abandon, often paired with voiceovers by the dancers talking about their home life, or former tragedies that have befallen them. Sure, it’s not hard for a director to see the intense emotion that is clearly being released through krumping, but the effect is nonetheless cinematically breathtaking.

LaChapelle falls into a trap of focusing too much on a particular event centered around krumping: the ‘Battlezone’, a dance-off between Tommy’s clowns and the krumpers, is certainly interesting, but not enough to be built up as a denouement. I could have done with more of the early street footage both of the krumpers and the clowns, as well as delving more deeply into their backstories. But LaChapelle gets things right too: he does not shy away from showing us the very flawed nature of Tommy the Clown, a man who has done much for his community in keeping kids away from violence and drugs, but also clearly suffers from a quite inflated ego because of it. Another finale-esque moment involving him is one of the film’s finest non-dancing moments. Also, the parallels between traditional African cultures and the krumpers LaChapelle draws is obvious once you see it onscreen, but a keen perception nonetheless.

Rize is best to catch now before krump hits the mainstream: at the end, we see three of the main krumpers shot in a traditional, music video style by LaChapelle: gorgeous lighting, sweating, toned bodies and all in slow-motion. It certainly still has an impact, but the unedited, spontaneous footage of the rest of the film is really what will sear this film and these people into your memories for quite a while.

Directed by David LaChapelle; cinematography by Morgan Susser and Michael Totten; editing by Fernando Villena; original score by Amy Marie Beauchamp and Jose Cancela; produced by David LaChapelle, Mark Hawker and Ellen Jacobson; released by Lions Gate Films. Rated PG-13. Runtime 86 mins.