Review by Stuart O'Connor
Stars Stephen Spinella, Jack Plotnick, Wings Hauser, Roxane Mesquida, Ethan Cohn, Charley Koontz, Daniel Quinn, Devin Brochu, Hayley Holmes, Haley Ramm, David Bowe
Written by Quentin Dupieux
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 85 minutes
Directed by Quentin Dupieux
I want to be the first to get the perfect description of Rubber out of the way ... it's really, surreally good. OK, stop your groaning. It's a cheesy line, but it's true – Rubber is truly bizarre, weird, silly, ridiculous and stone-cold crazy. But it's hilarious, fun and very, very entertaining.
I sat down to watch Rubber with few expectations. I knew a little about the plot – a "killer tyre" goes on the rampage – but I knew nothing about how this would play out on the screen. I mean, how much can they make of a one-joke plot? Well, quite a lot, actually. And there are no retreads here – this is all clever, original stuff. Rubber introduces a new psycho killer to the horror genre: Robert, a tyre that develops terrifying telepathing tendencies. It's a French production but it was filmed in the California desert, which is where we first meet Robert as he pulls himself from the sand and rolls off on his rampage of terror. At first he's happy merely crushing things under under his tread – a plastic bottle here, a scorpion and spider there. But when he comes across somethng that he can't crush, such as a glass bottle, he suddenly unleashes his uncanny psychokinetic power ... and the bottle shatters into a million pieces. As Robert rolls his way through the desert, he tests and grows his new-found power ... first on a rabbit, then a crow. Until he comes across some people.
The film is not entyrely (sorry!) made up of the wrongdoings of Robert. There is a secondary, just as weird storyline that kicks off when a police car pulls up in the desert and an officer climbs out of the boot. Rubber is the weirdest, funniest horror film you're likely to see this year. It's utterly mental, and takes great delight in messing with audience expectations, breaking the fourth wall in fresh, interesting ways. A minor quibble: it probably goes on a little long, and sags slightly in the final 10 minutes or so. But that didn't seem to bother most of the appreciative FrightFest crowd, who laughed like drains throughout. Rubber will be getting a DVD/Blu-ray release this year from Optimum, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Once you've seen it, you'll never trust those four round things on your car again.