THE BETA TEST
Jim Cummings • PJ McCabe
(2021)
Jordan (Jim Cumming) is a high-profile Hollywood agent, he and his friend PJ (PJ McCabe) work for APE trying to close a package deal with a rich Chinese producer, Raymond Lee (Wilky Lau).
Jordan is engaged and soon to marry his fiancée Caroline (Virginia Newcomb). One day he receives a mysterious letter for an anonymous sexual encounter with a secret admirer. Reluctantly at first, he throws the letter away but later changes his mind and accepts the invitation.
He is given an instruction to be at a hotel room at a specific date and time where he and the secret admirer have sexual intercourse anonymously, both of them must wear masks to protect their identities. He takes his mask off while he’s leaving the room and looking back, he sees the silhouette of a woman whom he believes to be someone he knows, and he thinks she also knows who he is.
He becomes obsessive in finding the truth about the invitation to the point where it almost ruins his life as he’s tumbling deep down the rabbit hole impersonating a federal officer just to get the information leading to the person behind all of this.
The first half of the film looks promising until it fails to engage with the main story as there are so many things going on at the same time. The protagonist isn’t a kind of a guy I like to root for. The film builds up so much tension which I can only hope for one ultimate outcome to pay off at the end, but that doesn’t happen. Instead it leaves me with a creepy mental breakdown, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be funny or not.
THE BETA TEST premiered at Tribeca Film Festival on June 11, 2021. IFC films acquired U.S. distribution rights and released in United States on November 5, 2021, along with Video on Demand.
