“A hilarious skewering of the shallowness of the movie industry and the paranoia and mistrust that afflicts the guilty. Cummings and McCabe’s film touches a raw nerve with sharp, funny, awkwardly prickly provocation.” That’s our review, talking about “The Beta Test,” a new satirical feature from writer/director/actor/producer Jim Cummings (“Thunder Road,” “The Wolf of Snow Hollow.” Written and directed by Cummings and filmmaking pal PJ McCabe (who also co-stars in the film), “The Beta Test” premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year and was eventually screened at the Tribeca Film Festival this past summer in North America.
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The film is a big cultural anxiety stew and reckoning, incorporating the ideas of #MeToo, guilty, adultery, douchebag agents in Hollywood, and the white men in this day and age who believe they are being persecuted for just being white men. Along with Cummings and McCabe, the film features Virginia Newcomb, Kevin Changaris, Olivia Grace Applegate, Jessie Barr Christian Hillborg, Malin Barr, Jacqueline Doke, and Wilky Lau.
The “multi-layered film… is also about deceit, dishonesty, the panic of even the possibility of facing consequences, the uncertainty of living in a world with social upheaval, Internet shaming, and the bloodsucking nature of the leeches in Tinseltown,” we wrote. Obviously a lot is going on in the film, but anxiety, fear, and the horror of it all are prominent themes.
The official synopsis is quite simple:
A married Hollywood agent receives a mysterious letter for an anonymous sexual encounter and becomes ensnared in a sinister world of lying, murder, and infidelity in this scintillating satire.
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IFC Films is releasing “The Beta Test” in select theaters, on digital platforms, and VOD on November 5. Before that, the film will also screen at the 2021 Fantastic Film Festival in Austin, which runs from September 23 – Sept 30. Check out the first trailer for the film below.
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