Critics reviews

it's questionable whether [the plot] fits together neatly and illustrates the movie's thematic concerns rather than setting up the next explosive scene between Jordan and whatever unfortunate soul he happens to be dealing with. The latter, I suspect, is the movie's true reason for being: maybe the filmmakers created a substantive, often hilarious main character and then built a project around him... But if you can maintain a tone, you can keep an audience's attention, and Cummings and co-director/co-star PJ McCabe are more adept at maintaining tone than a lot of better-known filmmakers.

The threads about data scraping, the scathing satire, and the thriller at the heart of it all never quite cohere properly and make for a particularly muddled ending. But the main targets here are clear as day, and they’re lined up cleanly in the crosshairs to be hit square in the chest.

It’s when the story pulls back from its righteous mission to burn down Hollywood hypocrisy that The Beta Test can get frustrating... And after a satisfying explanation of the real-world mechanics of the purple-envelope scam, the film ends on a vague, potentially apocalyptic note that would have had more dramatic heft were it presented a bit more clearly.

“The Beta Test” would have been stronger if [Cummings and McCabe] had honed their furious focus even further. Instead, it feels like two films mashed together — a shaky thriller built on a vaguely-constructed social-media theme, set inside an incisive and genuinely disturbing industry satire.

It’s part Giallo, part ‘90s erotic thriller, and very much a brutal condemnation of a particular kind of egotistical white male who believes himself the center of the universe... It’s a bold advancement for Cummings as a filmmaker, with precise compositions and some complicated sequence shots that may or may not be the contribution of McCabe.

The delirious fun of ["The Beta Test"] — and the secret to how it maintains such an irrepressible thrum of urgency even when it spreads itself far too thin, which is always — is that Cummings has found a roadworthy vehicle for his offscreen obsessions.

With Cummings and McCabe in the lead roles, it’s tempting to read The Beta Test’s plot as a metaphor for their own artistic struggles... This double-awareness imbues The Beta Test with a sly auto-critical tension, as if they’re exploring their potentiality for debasement upon achieving mainstream recognition.

The Beta Test is an erotic thriller as devotedly as it’s a satire and an upsetting glimpse of a very specific dying breed of tinseltown phony.

[The protagonist's] unpleasantness is satirised, of course, but there are still times when he’s too annoying for the film’s good. Yet the story’s weirdness — which blends Entourage and Eyes Wide Shut — is always intriguing, and Cummings and McCabe use it to say a few sharp things about modern life.

Impressively navigating a post-#MeToo industry reckoning and disputes between talent agencies and the WGA while also functioning as a sweat-inducing study of a sociopath’s self-immolation, Cummings’ latest is a humdinger.

["The Beta Test"] is part delicious satire of Hollywood culture and part frustratingly muddled thriller. But the good bits are sufficiently impressive it wouldn’t be fair to hold its flaws against it too much. We mustn’t be greedy for perfection.

Individual scenes showcasing [the protagonist's] behavior start to feel familiar as the film progresses — failed slyness, then aggression, then apologies and more lies — and Cummings’ admirers may start to worry that he needs to find another gear as a performer in order to remain viable as a lead actor, even in his own films. But Beta Test, like Wolf before it, at least finds the hyphenate refusing to tell the same story over and over.