Test

This film has minimal dialog and a lot of boring dancing of a repetitive routine. The acting is terrible and the dialog, made up and improvised on the fly. The editing jumps scenes , leaving gaps in continuity. There is insufficient context to make anything comprehensible. It's a fairly childish and superficial look at gay life and the early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. The audio track is terrible as in so many of these low budget, Indie films, but to the point where one has to turn on the subtitles. Sadly, at that point one then has to read the childish dialog from the badly written script. Movies like this should be tossed in the nearest dumpster!

I was hoping for a lot more from this. For starters, being old enough to remember this era, "Test" captures absolutely none of the feel of that time. If you want a genuine reflection of what things were really like, watch any of the gay films that were actually made then: "Longtime Companion", "An Early Frost" or others. Throwing in a couple of Bronski Beat songs and having your characters talk about their new Sony Walkmans is a pretty pitiful way to have to make people believe it's set in 1985.

Slow pacing, weak writing and mediocre acting don't help. This film had no emotional depth at all, which is sad considering the seriousness of the subject matter. In sum, this movie sadly adds nothing to the genre and you're probably better off watching something else.

If you love lean, topless, white, men in their prime dancing ballet then this movie is for you!

The plot is simple and straightforward and has been told before. Thus, it's the delivery of the story that I think is fair to criticize.

The characters of the movie did a convincing job capturing the deep fear and dread that many people still have about HIV/AIDS and the unknown.

The plot moves along in a beautiful "slice of life" style of narrative. You get to see Scott Marlowe's character go through the anxiety and even horror of possibly getting a disease that just murdered Rock Hudson. Everyone else is so afraid and in panic of this new mysterious disease strongly associated with gay men that it sparks an acute wave of homophobia. You see "die faggot" spray painted casually and menacingly on a mattress on the side of the street. You worry if you can get it from sweat. You try to find out if you can tell who has it just by looking at their appearance. The paranoia builds and unfortunately the stigma of HIV/AIDS is still as strong and relevant today.

A subplot develops as the gay protagonist tries to also dance like a man as harshly instructed by his fastidious jerk of a choreographer.

My only negative criticism I think and room for improvement is found in nearly all gay films. It's a movie about cisgender white men. Forget drag queens, trans-gendered people, and more importantly people of ethnic minorities and how it was nearly impossible to get help without interacting with those other marginalized groups. This is another gay film that beautifully annihilated reality by believing that white men are the default human beings.

Overall though, if you're into looking at white men dance naked and have gay sex with each in a tasteful movie with a decent plot then give this movie a try!

without high expectations, you can have good time with this movie. direction is nice, and atmosphere is cool. san francisco gay scene looks nice, but i don't feel enough paranoia to empathize with characters. it feels like movie tries to tell aids crisis, and how people felt its burden on their shoulders but you end up watching almost 20 minutes of gay ballet/dancing scenes over and over again.

cinematography is classy. amateur looking actors are doing very well jobs. not the best gay themed movie of the year (that one is stranger by the lake for sure) or aids/HIV movie (and that one is dallas buyers club) but still very enjoyable experience. director chris mason johnson will probably make better movies than this one.

Though technically well done and visually adept, even stunning at times, Test adds nothing new to the genre of mid 80s HIV cinema. Test is a step up from Chris Mason's 2008 film, The New Twenty, but suffers from the same lack of original story.

The trailer led me to believe I was going to see a movie that was as much or more about dance as it was about HIV. This was not the case. What dancing there was was the highlight of the film.

Scott Marlowe plays the lead role, Frankie, superbly. It is unfortunate that he was not given a more interesting story to tell.

In the end Test plays like a safe-sex public service announcement done with edgy flair.