The Beta Test
IFC Films | Release Date: November 5, 2021 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
4
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
83
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJun 13, 2021
Overall, Cummings and McCabe’s film touches a raw nerve with sharp, funny, awkwardly prickly provocation. Read full review
81
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzNov 4, 2021
A bold, raw, bordering-on-manic mashup of Eyes Wide Shut, Ivans XTC and HBO’s Entourage, the new thriller-cum-satire The Beta Test is here to test your limits. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesCarlos AguilarNov 4, 2021
Ghastly humor coated in serrated-edged commentary on corrosive power creeps in through Jordan’s yearnings for a world before online accountability. Read full review
80
EmpireJordan KingOct 14, 2021
Whilst occasionally breathless to the point of exhausting, there’s nothing second-rate about The Beta Test, a sharp satire on the film industry that really packs a punch. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanMar 22, 2021
The movie, at its best, holds you in its grip. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleTrace SauveurNov 4, 2021
It’s an erotic thriller set-up matched with the sort of morally dubious character that would have De Palma’s ears perked, but it plays like more of a farce in practice. Read full review
78
Paste MagazineDom SinacolaNov 2, 2021
Against a lean genre construction, Cummings sputters and apologizes and screams at people and breaks things—vaping constantly—less a force of nature than a flesh-and-blood body half-failing to contain the whiny forces of nature within. His performance is a miracle of control and timing, focused by how little control Jordan has in his life, how poorly timed everything seems to be. Read full review
75
IndieWireDavid EhrlichNov 9, 2021
In a film that barely has a grasp over its own hare-brained conspiracy and often feels like an extension of the mental breakdown that its protagonist might be suffering . . . Cummings’ performance adds a key measure of consistency. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzNov 5, 2021
It takes prodigious comic gifts to make a loathsome, pathetic character so mesmerizing that you enjoy watching him dig himself into a hole for 90-plus minutes. Jim Cummings, the star, editor, co-writer, and co-director of The Beta Test, has those gifts. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeNov 4, 2021
Cummings and McCabe zero in on an angle they do understand—the death scream of the untouchably powerful man—and can make fun of with precision. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineChuck BowenNov 2, 2021
Underneath the film’s seeming casualness is an astute portrait of alcoholism, as well as a knowing glimpse of how micro tensions affect macro power plays, from pissing contests between men to sexual violations. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeOct 19, 2021
Cummings works the same muscles that attracted attention in the festival darling Thunder Road and its follow-up, The Wolf of Snow Hollow: Exploring the varieties of volatile awkwardness and desperation, he plays a well-known type (the showbiz ladder-climber who’s nothing but a smile) while making the character unlike any we’ve seen. Read full review
63
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 4, 2021
While The Beta Test does a solid job of presenting Jordan as the kind of person ripe for a comeuppance and giving us a high-octane performance to go with it, the movie falls down when it comes to basic storytelling. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 3, 2021
The Beta Test is a wired, wound-up and instantly-hip/instantly-dated Hollywood riff on relationships — romantic, business and otherwise. Read full review
60
Screen RantFerdosa AbdiNov 5, 2021
Cummings and McCabe don’t quite balance the purple envelope mystery with the character study of a self-involved man, and the ending takes a sharp left towards confusion, but it is surely something worth watching. Read full review
60
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanNov 4, 2021
The movie is at its best when the filmmakers focus their ire on Hollywood itself — the hypocrisies, the empty promises, the rejections and belittlements that are built right into the system. Read full review
60
The GuardianLeslie FelperinOct 13, 2021
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. Read full review
58
The Film StageMichael FrankJun 18, 2021
If one can get past the exaggerated nature of The Beta Test, there’s much to glean from its mixture of laughs and critiques. Come for the mystery, stay for the study of society by two white guys playing absolute assholes. Even if that study reaches farther than it can grasp. Read full review
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