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Each weekend, millions of people race to theaters to spend their hard-earned money watching movies that have little or no basis in reality. They sit through action movies about superheroes, love stories about werewolves, and kids’ movies about talking puppies. Writer/director Quentin Dupieux’s hilarious horror/comedy Rubber, then, is a quirky tribute to those contrived, nonsensical movies—and to us voyeuristic idiots who just can’t get enough of them.
Rubber follows a ruthless murderer on a killing spree out in the desert. After starting small—with some small animals and things—he sets his sights on a beautiful young woman (Roxane Mesquida) who’s traveling alone. As she checks into a sleepy desert motel, the killer moves in closer.
Oh…hold on. I think I might have forgotten to mention an important part of the plot: the killer is a rubber tire.
Yep. A plain black rubber tire.
As an eager audience looks on—watching the whole thing through their binoculars and occasionally commenting on the action—the tire tracks its next victim.
As a quirky horror-comedy, Rubber is as random and outlandish as they come. It’s a horror film about an inanimate object on a deadly rampage—and if the very idea of it seems completely ludicrous to you, then it’s probably best if you skip it. If you prefer watching movies that have some kind of a point, you’ll absolutely hate Rubber. But if you just happen to love random comedy—the kind of comedy that could have a live turkey popping up in a hotel room for no apparent reason (or, say, a plain black tire blowing up its victims using telepathic powers)—you’ll enjoy this strangely languid and completely haphazard adventure.
Of course, there’s a little more to it than that. Rubber also seems to be offering some kind of message about the people who watch movies (and the people who make them). The message isn’t all that clear—and the more meta parts of the film seem to come and go at random. But that, again, is part of the film’s charm: it’s just so completely random that you can’t help but laugh along.
Rubber isn’t a non-stop bloodbath (though you should be prepared for a few exploding heads). It isn’t a wild and wacky over-the-top comedy, either. Instead, thanks to its French writer/director, the pacing is more deliberate, and the humor is sometimes subtle (not to mention very, very odd). At times, the cinematography is also surprisingly striking. It’s a totally bizarre but extremely clever film, posing as an unconventional horror movie.
If you can see the humor in long, stylish shots of a killer tire rolling down a desert road (while a bunch of demanding spectators look on), then you won’t want to miss this strange little movie about deadly tires who kill for “no reason.”
In fact, you’ll laugh so hard, you might just explode.
