The third feature film from Jim Cummings, this time co-directed and co-written with co-star PJ McCabe, The Beta Test is both darkly hilarious and highly disturbing. A lot of viewers may not want to identify with most of the behaviour shown, but it's impossible to deny the truth at the heart of it.
Cummings plays a Hollywood agent named Jordan Hines. He may not be one of the biggest names in town, but he seems to be doing okay. There's a potentially very big deal lined up, Jordan is set to marry a lovely woman named Caroline (Virginia Newcomb), and, to top it all, he has just received a message with the offer to meet a compatible stranger in a certain hotel room for blindfolded, anonymous, sex. That confidence boost, an added swagger, soon turns ugly, as Jordan starts to become more and more desperate to find out who his sexual partner was in that room.
Let's not pretend otherwise here, The Beta Test puts the male ego under a microscope and finds it to be seriously lacking. The main character is shown to be too fragile, too insecure (for no good reason, other than his self-perception), too entitled and demanding, and too easily taken down a slippery road of secrets and lies for the promise of a good, sweaty, sex session. The main character is, despite how you may protest, representative of many men. Which is why The Beta Test (a frankly superb title, with that loaded double meaning) works as well as it does.
While it obviously explores sex, both in terms of what people desire from one another and the way it can affect every part of your life (a confidence boost, a lingering afterglow that others view in you as something positive, a journey to keep exploring and doing better with any new partner), The Beta Test also, and in a more straightforward way, explores toxic masculinity and the culture of brutish bullshittery that makes up many different career sectors. Cummings plays a Hollywood agent, but he could have easily been a stockbroker, a salesman, a police officer, or someone in any number of typically male-dominated environments where shows of strength and the ability to shout others down can win out over more refined approaches.
Cummings is great in the lead role, once again perfectly embodying a man at war with his own expectations of how a man should act. His antics, his rants, his horrible abuse of others around him, everything veers constantly between the hilarious and the horrendous, and Cummings happily makes himself more and more of a monster as circumstances slip further out of his control. McCabe also does well, playing the best friend/colleague who tries to help the main character get himself back on the right track. Newcomb has less to do, but gets to basically play someone with the patience of a saint, and many others make strong impressions in smaller, but no less vital, roles in the proceedings.
Often very uncomfortable, even the opening scene is a horrible and lingering gaze at fatal abuse committed by a male with a wounded ego, The Beta Test is yet another film that feels a bit depressing because it is so relevant and necessary. It’s another winner from Cummings, working brilliantly in collaboration with McCabe, and one that I would recommend to everyone. Sadly, I fear that those who should take heed of it most will not see anything of themselves onscreen. But they are there. And they are clearly seen.
9/10
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