You may have heard that “Rubber” is a movie about a sentient automobile tire that goes around killing people. If so, you have heard correctly! “Rubber” is indeed that.
It is also, however, a dementedly clever deconstruction of horror movies, not to mention a chunk of genuine capital-A Absurdism. Written and directed by Quentin Dupieux — who is also the French techno musician known as Mr. Oizo — “Rubber” has an ordinary tire becoming self-aware and rolling around the Southwest, using the power of its mind (?) to cause death. All of this is witnessed by an audience — not a movie audience sitting in a theater, but an actual live audience, standing in the desert and using binoculars to observe the tire’s rampage and the subsequent police investigation in real time.
The 82-minute film feels a bit stretched, but not as much as you’d expect with a premise this odd. The film’s trailer quotes CHUD.com’s Jacob Hall describing it as “Roger Corman by way of Samuel Beckett.” That’s an utterly perfect summary, so I won’t try to improve upon it.
B+ (1 hr., 22 min.; )
