About
Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser, Roxane Mesquida, Ethan Cohn
Director: Quentin Dupieux
“A homicidal car tire, discovering it has destructive psionic power, sets its sights on a desert town once a mysterious woman becomes its obsession.” (IMDb)
What to Expect
A tire gains consciousness and goes on a killing spree
All it wants is to DESTROY
The end, bye
Why You Should Watch It
Although this movie feels like someone’s film school final project at times, you can’t deny it’s different and entertaining. Dupieux managed to anthropomorphize a rubber circle with a personality and character arc—hell, it even gets gendered pronouns by the end of it. And just to make sure you don’t start taking the premise too seriously, the audience is inserted into the film as well for comedic commentary and meta humor of the horror genre. A self-described “homage to no reason,” Rubber is silly, but hilariously so.
Rainy Day Flick (C)
The Spoilers
In high school art class, I drew a perspective drawing of a wolf jumping over a river, and reflected in the water were feathered wings sprouting from its back. When my teacher asked why I added wings to the reflection, I just shrugged and told her because I had wanted to. I thought it would look cool. It wasn’t until the question was posed to me that I realized how absurd a thing it was to ask. Art doesn’t have to have a reason. Art is meant to evoke emotion, and there is an infinite number of ways art can do so.
When Spinella’s sheriff broke the fourth wall to tell the audience, “All great films, without exception, contain an important element of ‘no reason,’” my first reaction was to roll my eyes. It sounds like Rubber’s attempt to justify itself: What you’re about to see is dumb and ill-explained, but it’s central to the whole theme! But then I think back to my high school art teacher wondering what the point of a winged wolf was, and I realize that I am faced with a work of art. Whether people see this art as good, great, or shitty is entirely subjective, but art it is.
For the record, I like this weird work of art. An innocuous inanimate object is able to subvert ridiculous horror tropes while shuddering with telepathic—sorry, psychokinetic—rage. And as our main character is mute, the audience becomes part of the movie to provide entertaining dialogue and subplot. Why does the tire have powers, and want to kill? Why does the audience need to die before the “movie” ends? No reason. It’s an excuse that’s brilliant and dumb at the same time. And for Rubber, it works.