Co-directed by Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe( who dallies a small part in the film ), The Beta Test workmanships a story that, on the face of it, is about this mystery involving anonymous fornication and how the age of internet connectivity is setting us up for big disgraces, especially for excessively image-conscious people. Cummings’ The Beta Test has some alternative texts for Hollywood agents and a very blunt disdain for harmful masculinity and male fragility.

The Beta Test follows Jordan( Cummings ), a Hollywood agent who is less than two months away from getting married. One daytime, he receives an invitation in a purple envelope for anonymous sex with a stranger. Someone with ground and an understanding of how shady this situation is would have immediately thrown out the card or handed it over to the police. Jordan is not that person, however, and as the terrifying opening stage informs the audience, many have fallen victim to the unpleasant meaning. Jordan, who apparently has everything a soul can demand or need, decides to go for it. What follows is the absolute implosion of a follower who is unable to get in touch with his feelings and is asphyxiated by poisonous manlines; the most horrifying thing of all is he’s a world-class jerk.

Related: Finch Review: Tom Hanks Is A One-Man Wonder In Heartrending Dystopian Sci-Fi

Despite some key minutes that speak to the issue of social media and how people’s private livings are being commodified and boxed to sell anything from designer shoes, a brand-new dwelling, or even unexpected sex encounters, these vistums are sailing at best. They don’t multitude almost as much of a pierce as expected, even if it’s the B story. The prime crux of The Beta Test is ultimately about male insecurity and poison manlines. In a scene where Jordan’s mental state reaches a crescendo, he mentions on how the world is becoming a atrocious arrange, and that it is a world he won’t have any control of. Intentionally or not the filmmakers midst an individual who is beyond sympathy, but is completely understandable. The opening of the film is a jarring juxtaposition of how Jordan approaches the situation and his incitements compared to a woman who receives the same invitation. An entirely different perspective could be told from her point of view which removes light on what extends a woman to infidelity.

Jordan is not an unfamiliar person. He is someone who has is to say explicitly by a patriarchal society that he needs to be a man that is always in control. When Jordan receives this tempting invitation to have sex with a terminated stranger, he forgoes self-control of his life. Jordan may not be able to articulate it, but this notion of the alpha male versus the beta male is all too familiar when women are regularly forced to reckon with a society that exclusively hears them as objectives of desire and who are only worth prosecute for sex. Outside of fornication, husbands are meant to be reigning pushes in all cavities they occupy and anything that challenges that should be met with aggression. Jordan is both a martyr and an keen participant in this wicked mentality. While The Beta Test needs ingenuity and is not as incisive as it sets out to be, it does are to be able to accurately display a clear picture of life’s greatest horror rogue: a harmful man.

As someone who has never seen Jim Cummings in anything, and can’t even recall visualize him in Halloween Kills, he is pretty darn charming. The actor has an exciting range when playing a character who is both funny and emphatically terrifying at the same time. From his cheap bravado to his aggressive macho man act to his awkwardness, Cummings proves to be an actor who is capable of just about anything. The Beta Test is a very impressive showcase for him as relevant actors, but also as a artistic patrol — he is the film’s writer, superintendent, and writer.

The film tonally and thematically positions up with Jordan’s sleazy Hollywood vibe, it’s as if McCabe and Cummings lean into the cheesiness to best illustrate Jordan’s world and apparently the specific characteristics of the film industry McCabe and Cummings are currently forced to reckon with as geniu. This film has no sympathy for Hollywood, solely all the persons who scarcity the geniu or ambition to actually be artists. Anchored by a charismatic execution from Cummings, The Beta Test is at times nonsensical, but it is a exhaustively entertaining and insightful parody. Cummings and McCabe don’t fairly match the purple envelope mystery with the character study of a self-involved man, and the ending takes a sharp-witted left towards distraction, but it is surely something worth watching.

Next: Spencer Review: Larrain’s Take On Princess Diana Is Beautiful, Haunting& Flawed

The Beta Test liberates in hand-picked theaters, on digital pulpits and VOD on November 5, 2021. It is 91 minutes long and is unrated.

Read more: screenrant.com