The Beta Test (2021)
Directed by PJ McCabe
An engaged Hollywood agent receives a mysterious letter for an anonymous sexual encounter and becomes ensnared in a sinister world of lying, infidelity, and digital data.
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For Jordan – played by Cummings in an edgily neurotic performance that fully channels Christian Bale in Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000) – is a would-be alpha whose beta status is tested and exposed by his self-destructive, self-owning actions and experiences.
It’s a dark and sarcastic comedy that runs through the veins of The Beta Test , the type that will appeal to fans of Mary Harron’s American Psycho .
Whatever McCabe’s contributions, however, this is still primarily a vehicle for Cummings to give a neurotic, unhinged lead performance, this time in a more notably coked up manner reminiscent of American Psycho .
That, of course, brings to mind Michael C. Hall and Dexter , and indeed if The Beta Test is pastiche, it’s of a quippy, cutting style of thriller popular around the turn of the millennium—Mary Harron’s film version of American Psycho included.
Think the manic energy of Jim Carrey in Liar Liar (1997) meets the calculated charm of Christian Bale in American Psycho (2000).
As played by Jim Cummings, the co-writer and co-director of The Beta Test , Jordan is parody of Type-A personalities, resembling Patrick Bateman in American Psycho if he was less successful and merely starting on the pathway to murderousness.
Cummings has referred to The Wolf of Snow Hollow as “dumb Zodiac,” which could fairly make The Beta Test his “dumb The Game” by way of a “dumb The Social Network.”
This stripped back indie thriller which peppers elements of The Game, Falling Down and Swimming with Sharks into a heady brew of narcissism is potent stuff.
Cummings’ face-based performance recalls the elastic volatility of a young Jim Carrey, specifically the scene in “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” when he’s birthing himself out of an animatronic rhinoceros’ butthole.
Shifting on its feet like a combination of The Player and Falling Down , The Beta Test is a look at what certain people would do, for a little distraction and curiosity plus the price they pay for this privilege, some of them don’t even realise the price until it’s just too late.
This stripped back indie thriller which peppers elements of The Game, Falling Down and Swimming with Sharks into a heady brew of narcissism is potent stuff.
If the Jim Cummings/PJ McCabe effort was going to be likened to other titles you could link it as a “ Falling Down meets The Player by way of Eyes Wide Shut directed by David Fincher” type film that centres itself around a Patrick Bateman-esque unhinged exec and the price paid for an evening of stimulated distraction.
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As Jordan goes searching for the woman with whom he had his brief, blindfolded tryst, his repeated (if unconvincing) impersonation of a federal police officer serves not only to show yet more imposture from this deeply insincere man, and to conjure slyly Cummings’ leading part as a police officer in his breakout feature as writer/director Thunder Road (2018), but also to align The Beta Test to the more unhinged neighbourhood of LA neo-noir, not far from where films like Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales ( 2006), David Robert Mitchell’s Under The Silver Lake (2018) and David Buchanan’s Laguna Ave.