[Rating: Solid Rock Fist Up]
Revealing how the sausage is made in the entertainment business is nothing new. Before Ari Gold and Jerry Maguire there was Griffin Mill, and before him Howard Beale. Yet while the secret about the cutthroat nature of showbiz has been out for some time, the last few years have changed the landscape and the power dynamics quite a bit, forcing a reckoning that is already sending shockwaves through the entertainment industry. The Beta Test explores how these changes play out for the twisted souls who contorted themselves into the kinds of creatures that could survive these trenches, adding a murder mystery into things to spice it all up. The result is equal parts riveting and terrifying, touching on not only one man’s frantic existential crisis, but a worldwide reconfiguration of a power dynamic that’s increasingly measured in clicks instead of big dicks and dollars.
When Hollywood agent Jordan Hines (Jim Cummings) gets an anonymous purple envelope inviting him to a no-strings-attached sexual encounter, he’s intrigued but dismissive. Seemingly unwilling to risk his big-shot career and beautiful fiancée Caroline (Virginia Newcomb) on something so shady, Jordan trashes the mail and returns to his life. Yet as the audience watches Jordan navigate a professional landscape that’s turned the tables and is now grabbing HIM by the pussy, a newfound feeling of powerlessness grows, and before long he’s rooting through the garbage looking for his purple-hued salvation.
The decision might be abrupt, but it isn’t made casually. The Beta Test exists solidly in the post-#MeToo era and is wading through the early days of a post-COVID labor landscape that’s putting negotiating power back into the hands of the creators, leading to Jordan and those like him losing their grip on the industry’s steering wheel. It’s not so much that Jordan wants a fling, but that he NEEDS it, for his increasingly fading relevance demands some kind of external validation. When Jordan digs deeper into the mystery behind how the purple letter got to him, and the tragic circumstances surrounding others in town that received them as well, a frenzied desperation that was already at a boiling point blows Jordan’s preverbal lid off his kettle.
And while the thrust of the film’s narrative uses the evolving blackmail and murder mystery as a guiderail, what The Beta Test is really concerned with is the way toxic industries and the people who survive and thrive there react to assaults on their power. The reason the film succeeds is due to its effortless synthesis of character, efficient writing, and relevant social themes patched into the physical framework of the narrative.
Jordan’s name is one such patch and is indeed appropriate if it is taken from the conflict-heavy river separating Jordan, the Palestinian West Bank, Israel, and southwest Syria. Jordan’s whole life is conflict, a battle between talent and representation, yet as he so frequently mentions (and is reminded by others), his entire existence is in conflict with the changing industry. Whether it is the Writer’s Guild, evolving social norms owing to #MeToo, or the way talent negotiates with the Hollywood machine: everything that Jordan represents is on the way out. Personally, Jordan is no less adrift, for as Caroline reminds him at one point, “I watch you when you’re friendly with people and I don’t know if you’ve made friends the way normal people make friends or if you’re just doing it for the job. And I don’t think you can tell the difference either.”
Lost in a maze of his own bullshit and with no guiding light to help him find his way now that those “in charge” can’t act with impunity, it’s no surprise that the purple letter causes Jordan to lose what little stability he has left. Hollywood didn’t grow a crop of agents in the Weinstein and Scott Rudin era that could easily transition into thoughtful, reasonable people, and The Beta Test has a lot to say about what remains when the trash is taken out of an industry without a thorough mopping of the remnants left behind.
Cummings, who co-wrote/directed the movie with co-star PJ McCabe, continues to expertly deploy the same manic energy that made his earlier efforts a success, embodying a special kind of 21st century scared masculinity that has become something of a brand for him. The shot selections that McCabe and Cummings use to keep the audience in tight, unable to get any distance from the anxious dread that permeates the story, pair well with Jordan’s growing desperation and create a palpable anxiety for the viewer. As a result, as Jordan gets deeper into trouble (largely of his own making) one can’t help but to surrender to the film’s relentless pacing, which keeps the story propelling towards the end of its efficient 93-minute runtime.
A bit thin on character backstory for not just Jordan, but also Caroline (Newcomb is the secret MVP of the picture), The Beta Test manages to get by on its world-building, which sets Jordan and this universe up with just enough structure to give it legs. And while it would have been nice to spend a little more time with Jordan before getting the purple letter to gain some idea of how his life has changed prior to all the new intrigue, snippets of encounters in the office and symbolic shots of rotten back teeth slyly fill in all those gaps.
More of a parable than a story, this newest offering from Cummings and McCabe is an unsettling peek behind the showbiz curtain, looking not so much at the product but at the obsolete machinery struggling to continue churning it out. Alternating between tense, interesting, darkly hilarious, and sadly poignant, The Beta Test is likely the first of many reckonings for Hollywood’s new (and as yet uncertain) future.
“Obvious Child” is the debut novel of Warren Cantrell, a film and music critic based out of Seattle, Washington. Mr. Cantrell has covered the Sundance and Seattle International Film Festivals, and provides regular dispatches for Scene-Stealers and The Playlist. Warren holds a B.A. and M.A. in History, and his hobbies include bourbon drinking, novel writing, and full-contact kickboxing.
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