Rubber
Directed by: Quentin Dupieux
Written by: Quentin Dupieux
Starring: Stephen Spinella, Roxane Mesquida, Jack Plotnick and Wings Hauser

Rubber is one of the most unique movies I have ever seen, a film that on the surface looks simple and dull but the final product has characters, layers, and laughter. We follow a rubber tire that kills anything in its path by telekinetically blowing it up. Sound ridiculous? In the first five minutes the point is made clear with a monologue from Lieutenant Chad (Stephen Spinella) who comes out of the trunk of a car talking about why certain events happen or don’t happen in a select few movies. He refers to Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: Extra Terrestrial and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre among other films. The scene basically conveys that the film you are about to see is extremely self aware and wacky for reasons unexplained. You should know what you’re getting yourself into because who would have thought that a movie about a killer tire might actually be great.

Written, directed, edited, shot and scored by Quentin Dupieux, this half a million dollar indie horror comedy is a forced to be reckoned with. The strongest element of the film is its ability to take the viewer and express what the filmmaker expects your thoughts will be in the movie itself. The audience is referred to as “the spectators” and this is where the true genius of the film comes into play.

The film is shot beautifully and makes the most of its desert environment with many shots being locked in place and simply panning slightly to the left or right. Dupieux also shows off his creativity with a point of view shot that has you looking from the rear end of the tire pushing forward. This is also a technique used well from the same angle but on the back of a child’s bicycle later in the film. You witness the tire walking for the first time (or in this case, rolling for the first time), emerging from underneath the desert sand almost as if it was hatching from an egg as a newborn baby.

I enjoyed exploring what the tire does early on in the film and found it both visually interesting and playfully funny. Even the music cues are played in such a way as to give the tire a character without even having a word of dialogue spoken, similar to the first half of Pixar’s WALL-E. The tire’s journey is built up to a point where I found myself cheering in the final scene and I am not quite sure why.

Halfway through the film, the actors call themselves out on how ridiculous the movie is, showing just how fun and meta it can be. It is a “take it how you want it” sort of movie that I seemed to heavily gravitate towards from the opening scene on. I would say if that opening scene does not strike a chord with you, you might not get as much out of it. Don’t be put off by how wacky and out of its element the movie looks and feels. Dig deep and you will find a lot here. Rubber takes its time and knows exactly what it wants to do and I got more out of it than I get out of most movies. Something completely different, original, fresh and cool. — Joe

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