THE BETA TEST review

Weeks away from marrying his long time fiancee, Hollywood agent Jordan (Jim Cummings) receives a mysterious purple envelope, inviting him to a no strings attached sexual encounter that will fulfil all of his deepest desires. Jordan gives in to the temptation to explore a darker side of himself, but when he's contacted by blackmailers he starts to question everything and everyone around him, including the loyalty of his best friend and business parter PJ (co-director PJ McCabe) and fiancee Caroline (Virginia Newcomb).

Jim Cummings made a big impact back in 2018 with his first feature film, the tragi-comic and heartwarming Thunder Road, putting in the effort to make sure he was generating plenty of positive buzz on Film Twitter by turning on his natural charm at Q&A's, and touring his film around as many cinemas in the UK that would have him. Thankfully Cummings is no shyster and Thunder Road was one of the very best films of that year, and with his one man movie studio attitude he became an easy figure to root for in a manner that mirrored his role as a down on his luck cop in Thunder Road. Since then he's delved into genre fare with last year's The Wolf of Snow Hollow (where Cummings again played a cop), and now is back with The Beta Test; a much darker, scuzzier, sexier film, taking on the role of a Hollywood agent who lets the temptation to dive into the underbelly of Tinseltown get the better of him.

On the verge of landing a career defining deal with some executives from China, Jordan is suddenly coming to the realisation that he's part of a dying breed, and that his contribution to the filmmaking process is becoming increasingly redundant. Although he'd like to fool himself into thinking he's not like the old school of toxic wannabe moguls that came before him (Jordan claims things have changed "since Harvey"), it doesn't take much for him to allow his darker impulses to take over and then to become a lying, manipulative maniac when he becomes increasingly desperate and paranoid. When he thinks he hears his assistant Jaclyn (Jacqueline Doke who also appeared in Thunder Road) repeat something lewd he'd specified on the check box form that came in his purple envelope (top, sub, dom, face-sitting, etc), he cruelly admonishes her, much to her befuddlement.

As modern paranoia thrillers go, The Beta Test might not quite rival the mindfuck nature of David Fincher's The Game and Jordan mercifully stops short of going full Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, but the DNA of those films is definitely here, and there's tremendous rewatch value as Cummings's nervous comic energy shines through as Jordan can no longer hide the truth that he's something of a desperate fool. A proponent of the "fake it til you make it" school of thought, there's an exchange the film repeats with varying results, as Jordan tries to manipulate people into providing him with the information he needs by bluffing his way through, and then claiming he's an undercover cop when all as fails. It's played for all its comic absurdity by Cummings, who can do flustered incompetence like no-one else. Jordan is King of the bullshitters, and by far the most damaged and toxic man he's played so far (he barely wavers in deciding to cheat on his fiancee), but there's enough moments of comedy in his performance that you can't help but root for him, albeit with us asking ourselves why in a post-Harvey world.

Occupying the roles of lead actor, editor, co-screenwriter and co-director of The Beta Test (sharing some responsibilities with collaborator PJ McCabe, who also stars in as supporting role), it's quite possible that Cummings has encountered some men like Jordan in his career on the outskirts of Hollywood, although he's one of the new school of independently minded producers who's calling that entire method of filmmaking into question. With a wider scope than Thunder Road but still produced on a small budget with a skeleton crew, non name actors, and multi-tasking polymaths making the creative decisions, The Beta Test further expands on Cummings's message to Hollywood that filmmaking can be done differently, but also serves as a sly 'fuck you' to the people who engineered it to serve themselves.

It's not without fault, opening with a jarring scene of grisly violence that will have you thinking the pendulum has swung too far away from the heartwarming charm of Thunder Road in an effort to show scriptwriting range (not that that film didn't also include moments of unhinged mania - in fact, they're undoubtedly the most talked about scenes), but it's an outlier that isn't indicative of the rest of the film and therefore doesn't completely gel with it. The Beta Test is a colder, more emotionally detached film than his previous work, but when there's a camera on Cummings and he's letting his character's neuroses spill out, he's doing what he does best, and it's a lot of fun to watch.

Verdict

4/5

The Beta Test is in cinemas now.