Jointly written, directed by, and starring Jim Cummings (“Thunder Road,” 2018) and PJ McCabe (“The Wolf of Snow Hollow,” 2020), “The Beta Test” is a film that definitely sounds like a familiar erotic thriller on paper—in the realm of a “Derailed” (2005) or “Unfaithful” (2002). Chronicling the emotional unraveling of a soon-to-be-married Hollywood agent, Jordan Hinds (Cummings), the movie kicks into high gear when he receives a purple envelope containing an invitation to clandestinely spend a no-strings-attached night “with an admirer.” As the days go by and Jordan’s paranoia begins to break into his life and career, he stumbles upon a sinister underbelly where infidelity, murder, and data mining form an unholy trinity of chaos threatening to rip his seemingly perfect life apart.

The bones are more or less very similar to the archetype of infidelity in thrillers that “The Beta Test” feels like—the subject of the film engages in adultery and lives to regret it when the consequences of his actions put his life and loved ones in danger; you know the drill. As the film moves forward, however, you quickly realize there’s more inside that purple envelope than just the usual “cheating on your partner is bad” spin. In only 93 minutes, Cummings and McCabe successfully whip up a genre-bending exercise in unrelenting anxiety and discomfort, blending mystery, comedy, psychological drama, and techno thrills into an explosive cocktail that explores a plethora of themes and nails everything it attempts to say on its head.

Cummings exhibits this absolutely manic energy, bridging a tightrope between dark comedy, cringe humor, and realistic emotional volatility. His character Jordan isn’t just performative chaos; it’s a linchpin that connects the many pitfalls of the film and television industry’s many vices its enablers will do anything to uphold and protect. From sexual harassment by professional acquaintances in casual networking spaces to keeping up an exhausting appearance 24/7, with a dash of callous indifference to public emotional abuse in the workplace, “The Beta Test” seems to cover it all without making it preachy. The varying sociopolitical aspects the film’s co-creators aim to explore are an integral part of its story—even if its main arc seems to focus on infidelity and/or extramarital affairs and how the well-to-do deal with them.

But isn’t the film also a comedy? Yes, it is one, but it doesn’t represent “comedy” the way modern popular cinema sees it; it’s more grounded and chaotic, directly from a volatile reaction to anxiety, discomfort, and pure vulnerability. Much like Cumming’s sophomore directorial feature “Thunder Road,” the film’s most singular feature is how it consistently succeeds at dialing the self-aware cringe humor up to eleven, bringing it all to a breaking point which—if you’ve been hooked so far—will leave you an emotional mess, chuckling, cringing, and having your heart go out to an otherwise morally grey and often unlikable protagonist.

At the end of the day, though, it’s not about the likability (or the lack thereof) of the protagonist or a commentary on infidelity; it’s about so much more. People cheating on their spouses and significant others are only part of the problem—it’s the idea that the privileged who engage in it and enable it can get away with it and everything else by proxy. “The Beta Test” is an ambitious, hypnotic, and funny—but primarily heartbreaking—window into how a system that enables taking undue advantage of power slowly molds you into a monster chasing the idea of unlimited immunity from the consequences of your terrible behavior. It’s about overcompensation, paranoia, and the relentless need to turn the persona people create by putting all of Dale Carnegie’s corporate self-help books in a blender and drinking its muddled, homogenized smoothie till you break and can’t consume anymore. 

It’s about interpersonal relationships and the inability to have one when you’re switched on for every second of the day. It’s about the colleagues you’re surrounded by, who won’t stand by your side when you’re publicly being verbally abused in a workplace by your superior, and—when it’s all done and dusted—will just shrug and say, “Hollywood,” almost like it acquits systemic abuse and toxic behavior in the workplace. It’s about the internalization of said abusive behavior when you’re trying to land an assignment—an uncomfortable exchange between Jordan and his potential client leads to the latter sexually harassing the former, who can only get himself to unconvincingly say, “It’s funny. Love that.”

More than anything else, though, “The Beta Test” is about how when your mask of wealth, luxury, and confidence consumes you, a single crack is all it will take to fall into psychological chaos. Acting almost like a follow-up to Mary Harron’s 2000 film adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho,” this film turns even more inward, internalizing the external and making your mind a noxious space in which you surround yourself with—and internalize—all your worst traits, and let them fester until you lose yourself to them completely.

“The Beta Test” is unforgettable, uncomfortable, and unmissable. It dares to give you answers more uncomfortable than the questions it asks against the rules of a world where, according to an emotionally volatile Jordan, “Nobody knows what’s going on, and everybody wants to be Harvey.”

A previously edited version of this review was written in collaboration with—and first published on—The Black Cape Magazine.