Jim Cummings

  • The Beta Test (2021)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) There’s no doubt that the star of The Beta Test is writer-director-star Jim Cummings, so clearly does he dominate a film as an actor in a role he co-wrote and co-directed. His turn here as a Hollywood power agent is quite a switch from his previous role as a small-town sheriff in The Wolf of Snow Hollow – he writes, directs and plays the role at maximum intensity throughout, convincingly creating a caricature of the obnoxious hyper-bro. (It’s a misnomer to call the ridiculously multi-talented Cummings an overnight success given that his filmography stretches to 2009, but it’s only in the past few years and his jump in feature-length films with Thunder Road that his profile has really taken off.)  But while Cummings is central to The Beta Test, it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate to call this a character study – there’s a strong concept at the heart of the film that places a bit of weight on the plotting. It begins as our monstrously ambitious protagonist, on the verge of his wedding, gets a formal invitation for no-string-attached casual sex in a hotel room. Revealing the essential stupidity underneath his hard-driving exterior, our protagonist accepts and realizes far too late that he’s just waltzed into a blackmail situation. Never mind paying up — uncovering the identity of the blackmailer becomes his top absolute priority, and there’s little he’s not willing to do, bluff, intimidate or outright bully to get what he wants. The end fillip of the plot is a cute extrapolation of modern anxieties about surveillance capitalism, capping off a neat premise executed in slightly disappointing manner. The portrait of Hollywood in all of its aggressive weirdness is engaging – but the third act still underwhelms by its refusal to satisfy expectations. Still, what remains of The Beta Test (and the title here does have a double entendre questioning the protagonist’s image of self as a so-called alpha male) is Cumming’s triple-pronged performance. Combined with The Wolf of Snow Hollow, it’s enough to make you invest in future Cummings stocks.

  • The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)

    The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Disney Streaming, April 2021) My typical commentary on horror/comedy hybrids is that the balance between the two can be incredibly tricky at times, and not all filmmakers can pull it off. Accordingly, perhaps the most suspenseful aspect of The Wolf of Snow Hollow isn’t as much the small-town police hunt for a werewolf, but the tightrope act that writer-director-star Jim Cummings has to navigate between the demands of horror thrills, comedy chuckles and his own idiosyncratic deadpan sensibilities. The result, fortunately, is a success — something too quirky to be embraced widely, but a more ambitious-than-usual take on familiar genre elements. Much of the attraction of the film comes from its lead character, a policeman in a tight-knit community who has ambitions to succeed his father as the town’s sheriff, but significant anger issues (to the point of repeatedly hitting colleagues), an alcoholic past and difficult relationships with his ex-wife and daughter. Any lesser movie would have done some sleight-of-hand to ensure that he is the killer being hunted (and the film does initially nod in that direction as a red herring), but instead we get a bit of alter-ego reflection between the dual nature of werewolves (here cleverly rationalized as misogynist men hunting women when it’s bright at night) and the hero’s own issues in keeping both aspects of his personality under control. A big dose of visual style does help, especially in grounding The Wolf of Snow Hollow’s sometime-anachronistic execution that rapidly jumps back and forth in time to show cause and effect. The result is as slick as the dialogue can be deliberately rough. Cummings does pretty well in the lead role, with some honourable mentions going to Robert Forster in his final role, and Riki Lindhome as another level-headed police officer. The dialogue is self-consciously “realistic” in all of its awkwardness, but it does help ground the reality of the film to its small-town atmosphere, where nothing of importance is ever supposed to happen. Still, much of the fun of the film comes not from the werewolf hunt, but the way the protagonist buckles under pressure coming from all sides. (The film is not subtle about it at all, with a whistling kettle taking over the soundtrack at least twice.)  The Wolf of Snow Hollow could have benefited from a few additional minutes to straighten out its second-half revelations and play a bit longer in the jumpy atmosphere of a small town terrified by an average police force unable to cope with a serial killer. But the result is still quite good as it is, and well worth a watch. It’s not your average horror film, and not your average horror/comedy film either.