Review: The Beta Test Is a Livewire Thriller-Slash-Parable About Rechanneled Desire

The film is a knowing glimpse at how micro tensions affect macro power plays, from pissing contests between men to sexual violations.

The Beta Test
Photo: IFC Films

Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe’s The Beta Test conjoins two contemporary issues—the Me Too movement and the access we unwittingly grant to companies via social media—and draws surprisingly uncomfortable and empathetic conclusions. The filmmakers explore a trend that’s virtually commonsensical: With sexual and gender roles under scrutiny, people are driven to be more ashamed of their hungers, rendering them vulnerable to online titillation that can easily be manipulated and monetized by data-mining corporations. Understanding that desire cannot be stamped out, Cummings and McCabe fashion a livewire thriller-slash-parable, dashed with audacious elements of farce, about how a man rechannels his longings.

In a number of swift sketches, The Beta Test establishes that its central character, Jordan (Cummings) runs a Hollywood talent agency with his business partner, PJ (McCabe), and that they invest most of their energy in appearing to look successful, faking it until they make it. PJ is much better at this schtick, radiating a purposefully bland stability that eludes Jordan, whose escalating series of nervous tics serve as something like the film’s through line.

The talent agency (called APE, a joke that the filmmakers allow us to notice for ourselves) is attempting to land a Chinese mover and shaker, Raymond (Wilky Lau), whom they believe will allow them access to global intellectual properties. This pursuit is proving problematic, and it’s compounding Jordan’s tensions with his fiancée, Caroline (Virginia Newcombe). Out of nowhere, Jordan receives an invitation to have a no-strings sexual encounter with an admirer. We’ve already learned, via a startling prologue, that such trysts can lead to death.

Advertisement

With Cummings and McCabe in the lead roles, it’s tempting to read The Beta Test’s plot as a metaphor for their own artistic struggles. There are jokes about Marvel dominating the cinematic landscape, and many jabs at the senseless jargon that dictates the fashioning of creative “packages.” The filmmakers appear to be dramatizing their desire to break into the system, while casting themselves as the villains, part of the coterie of cynics who value IP over fresh voices. This double-awareness imbues The Beta Test with a sly auto-critical tension, as if they’re exploring their potentiality for debasement upon achieving mainstream recognition.

YouTube video

An even more resonant detail emerges: Jordan is revealed to be a recovering alcoholic and a reformed smoker, which partially explains the tightly coiled need that constantly radiates from his body—a need that must find expression. Cummings played a similarly neurotic character in his 2020 film The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and he gives a similarly impressive performance here, spinning dry-drunk anxiety into intense, highly personal comedy. Jordan is a man who can have nothing that he actually wants, a potential failure fending off multiple temptations for the sake of a stability that he most likely believed, as a drunk, to be unattainable.

Having achieved said stability, however, Jordan wonders if it’s worth his various sacrifices, and so he’s constantly erupting in poignant, hilarious, and often very disturbing outbursts. In this light, a casual fuck sounds like a godsend. Underneath the film’s seeming casualness is an astute portrait of alcoholism, as well as a knowing glimpse of how micro tensions affect macro power plays, from pissing contests between men to sexual violations. Even the seemingly chill Raymond acts out at one point, grabbing Jordan’s dick at a party, pointedly humiliating him. It’s Jordan’s goal, of course, to one day have the power to be the dick-grabber.

Advertisement

The Beta Test is governed by a knowing complicity with a devil. It’s easy to feel virtuous when decrying the crimes perpetuated by Harvey Weinstein, but what of the casual ways we manipulate and exploit one another daily? The film’s lynchpin is a series of scenes between Jordan and Jaclyn (Jaquelin Doke), a young assistant whom Jordan utilizes as a punching bag, a foil for his roiling frustrations. Cummings and McCabe don’t play these moments for easy pathos, instead homing in on how each character is conditioning themselves, and one another, to play preordained roles. It’s as if Jordan is trying to teach himself how to behave as Scott Rudin, while Jaclyn is learning the rules of the survivor who flourishes (we feel her yearning for power as viscerally as his). The filmmakers understand that Jordan is a tormented schmuck who, with the right luck, could be allowed to turn into the monster of his dreams.

Score: 
 Cast: Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe, Virginia Newcombe, Wilky Lau, Jacqueline Doke, Kevin Changaris, Jessie Barr, Malin Barr, Christian Hillborg, Olivia Grace Applegate  Director: Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe  Screenwriter: Jim Cummings, PJ McCabe  Distributor: IFC Films  Running Time: 93 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2021  Buy: Video

Chuck Bowen

Chuck Bowen's writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The AV Club, Style Weekly, and other publications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.