Mark Reviews Movies: TEST PATTERN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 18, 2021

In a single night, lives are suddenly and unexpectedly upended in writer/director Shatara Michelle Ford's Test Pattern. There isn't any time for these characters to comprehend what has happened, because the fallout becomes a lengthy process of driving to place, waiting, being turned away, driving to another location, and waiting some more.

The incident is a crime, perpetrated against Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) during a night out with her friend. Her relationship with boyfriend Evan (Will Brill) seems ideal. She has just started a new job. Renesha's friend Amber (Gail Bean) wants to go out for some drinks and conversation at a local bar, but Evan isn't interested. She goes alone.

A couple of guys there start talking to the women, buy them some drinks, and give them some edible marijuana. Mike (Drew Fuller) has his attention on Renesha, who says she has a boyfriend, but the guy keeps pressuring her into the drinks, the drugs, and the dancing.

Renesha doesn't remember much of what happened when she wakes up with the guy in bed, but she does remember a car ride, him kissing her, and flashes of the guy on top of her. After hearing this, Evan insists they drive to a nearby hospital so Renesha can complete a rape kit.

Ford's debut feature is about trauma in a specific way. The story simply follows Evan, pushing and pulling and speaking for his girlfriend, and Renesha, quiet and defensive and always looking ready to give up the search, as they go from hospital, to clinic, and to a medical center without any success. There's no comfort, sympathy, or understanding in this process.

One might think this is material serves as an indictment of the health care system and law enforcement in their inability to do this necessary work. It inherently is such a condemnation, but the real drama is in seeing this relationship under pressure, especially in the way Evan, trying to do what he can for Renesha, isn't doing anything close to what she wants or needs right now.

There is such coldness, harshness, and emotional vacancy in all of this, and while we're thinking about the abject failures of these systems in Test Pattern, we're also forced to consider how these failings are reflected within the central relationship—how it started, what happened in little moments, what it means separately to each of these characters.

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