Festival Predictions

2021 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: PJ McCabe & Jim Cummings’ The Beta Test

Published on November 16, 2020

A filmmaker really coming into his own, Jim Cummings didn’t waste much time post Thunder Road setting himself up with consecutive projects in The Wolf of Snow Hollow (read review) and The Beta Test – which he co-directed, co-wrote and co-stars with PJ McCabe. Another horror project via the Vanishing Angle production co., this went into production in November of 2019 and features Olivia Applegate and Virginia Newcomb (who you might recall from The Death of Dick Long). If selected this would be a fun “return” for Cummings – as he won the Grand Jury Prize for Thunder Road – the short.

Gist: This about a married Hollywood agent who deals with the fallout after receiving a mysterious letter from an anonymous sexual encounter.

Production Co./Producers: Vanishing Angle’s Natalie Metzger, Matt Miller and Benjamin Wiessner.

Prediction: MIDNIGHT.

U.S. Distributor: Rights Available.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).