Greetings everyone, sorry to be away for so long. Apart from work, performing, and schooling, I've been working on a particular review series that is not quite finished yet. Since I had some time, I've decided to review a film that a few friends have asked me to review since my High School years and was recently recommended to me AGAIN on my last post.
As someone who mostly enjoys stupid horror B movies, the idea of a film involving a killer tire didn't sound strange to me, more so stupid. I don't necessarily mean stupid as it's so bad it's fun stupid; I mean as in boring. Not to say, I can't see why people would find this concept amusing for its absurdity. For me, though, I don't know how a tire killing people in standard running time would not get old fast. Maybe as a fun little short or a gag, but not as a full-length movie. It's practically watching Christine or Duel only with a tire instead of a distinct-looking vehicle that kills someone more than one way. How many possibilities can a tire killing people lead to? Well, it's been nine years I've been putting off reviewing this movie, and now I'm finally going to review it. On with the review (How I missed writing that for a while).
The first question I had going into this film is how or why a tire comes to life? Is it a cursed object found on an Indian Burial ground? Did the soul of unseen sadistic truck driver from Duel transfer into one of the tires from the destroyed truck? There's no answer; it just comes to life. By not wasting time on the tire's origins, I guess will allow the film to get to the horrors of what a killer tire can do fast, except the film doesn't have the tire kill people right away. The film follows this living tire just surviving in the desert for ten minutes after now gaining consciousness. In the long run, nothing that eventful happens during that time frame. The only action happening is watching this living tire crush junk, which sounds boring. But in such a very odd way, the scenes with the tire rolling around the desert feel rather charming.
Compared to what happens later on in the film, the earlier scenes with the tire feel as if I'm watching a silent family-friendly movie like The Red Balloon or the first half of Wall-E. It's not big or complex with plot; it's just following the tire in silence with occasional soothing music and some pretty shots of the desert. The most endearing part is that even though the tire does not have a face, its emotions and thought process are felt by its actions, close-ups, and pacing. Despite its love for destroying objects and frustration when it can't, it has the mindset of a dumb dog or destructive child. It's innocent, naïve, and curious, but is destructive and dangerous for not having any guidance. For a film that could have just easily made the tire evil, it's strange yet refreshing that director Quentin Dupieux didn't make the monster generically predictable. Even when the tire starts murdering people, it still has those charismatic qualities because most of the murders come from its poor treatment from the humans it encounters. What's clever about the early scenes is how it manages to troll both audiences. For the audience who know what they paid to see, its funny that the film trolls them by not giving them what they were expecting right away. As for the audience who came into this film not knowing what the film is about still successfully trolls them by later giving them violent and gruesome scenes that differs from the cute and sentimental scenes from earlier.
When the film finally caters to the crowd that wants the gore and a body count from a living tire, the film delivers, but in no way I don't think anyone can see coming. One (including myself) would expect a killer tire to cause the same damage as an ordinary tire would. Crush someone's skull, or run over a person's face or limb, but the film does the last thing a person would think; it has psychokinesis! Unexpected, but it has mind powers, so it has a wide variety of ways to kill people, like controlling their body or lifting other objects to kill its victim. Actually it only uses its powers to blow up people's heads, nothing more. How can a tire have so much power than it should and yet still have so much limitations? It might as well just be a regular tire for how lackluster the execution is. Once again, the film trolls its audience.
As lazy and stupidly limited the tire's abilities are, the entertainment value of watching people's heads burst blood doesn't get old; it only gets funnier. Admittedly, the CGI effects for the heads exploding are better than most low-budget horror movies, but there's still a bit of a cheesy quality to the effects to still make these overblown deaths as cartoonishly gory as they appear. However, while having some cheesy effects of exploiting the comedy of the deaths, the film resorts to practical effects for the tire that are not bad in the slightest. They're better than they should appear. Quentin Dupieux used different methods of making the tire seem alive by using wires and having it controlled by a remote. It's intriguing how much time and effort was put into the monster rather than relying on CGI, and the final result for these effects is near seamless. In the end of it though, all this effort in special effects is spent on a freaking tire! Why does one of the most convincing effects in a low-budget horror movie have to involve a tire?
The tire is the selling point of the movie and essential to the story, but it's not the only thing going on in the film. The film doesn't so much as start out with the tire coming to life. The story involving the tire is viewed from an audience watching with binoculars in the middle of the desert. Why? Because one of the actors playing a cop named Chad (Stephen Spinella) in the tire plot and his accountant (Jack Plotnick) have brought them to watch their "movie" with the intentions to kill them. All sorts of questions are raised just by this scenario alone. How can an audience be watching the movie if it's happening live? Why does Chad and the accountant want to kill these people? The scenes involving the tire plot are supposedly fake, yet the tire still has its own will outside these scenes. How long has the tire been alive? Was it alive before the "film" started, or did the tire just come to life as soon as the "film" starts? How come none of the audience questions the effects for the tire if they are under the impression they are watching an illusion? If you're expecting answers to these questions, the film refuses to answer any because the film already answers all questions a viewer may have just from the very beginning of the movie.
Before the film gets started, the film opens with a monologue from Chad ranting of how things in movies happen for no reason. His examples starts out somewhat reasonable, like why E.T. is brown, to something as painfully evident as to why Adrian Brody in "The Pianist" has to hide from the Nazis despite his gifts as a musician. Pretty much everything he questions in his "No reason" monologue has a reason. The rant is concluded as Chad addresses both audiences that this film is an homage to films with no reason, thus officially beginning the film. How does this film pay tribute to these so-called "No reason" films when all his examples have a one, by officially giving the film no reason at all for most of the stuff going on?
Allowing the film to have no reason offers an experience where anything goes as long as people are watching a tire murder people. Having no limitations allows the film to throw in unexpected gags and having all kinds of wild twists and turns to both plots that only build more questions than answers. While the killer tire element of the film is enjoyably stupid, for me, the real fun is all the scenes involving Chad, the accountant, and the audience. Almost anything someone watching this film may think or comment on, there's a big chance that those thoughts are projected by the people watching in the desert, who comment, make jokes, or question the logic. In a way, one may think that the whole film will play-out as Mystery Science Theater 3000 set in the desert for a B movie that's meant to be ludicrous. At the film's halfway point, that concept is eliminated due to the loss of the audience within the film. Yet, one remains still invested in the "film," forcing the actors in the tire plot to keep the "film" going, leading to more unexpected chaos than the film began.
Overall Thoughts
If you were to ask me how I would describe a film like Rubber, I would say to picture an artsy independent horror movie inspired by Adult Swim. One can watch any absurd low-budget monster film and know where it's going, typically resulting for a disappointing bland watch. Rubber has no clear road map because it cares less about everything, thus creating a very spontaneous experience. It still gives people what they came to see, but it still plays with their expectations giving them more than what they anticipated and yet trolling them at times to provide them with less. For a film that sounds too dumb to even be worthy for the Syfy channel, the execution is so beautifully odd, silly, and surreal that it makes for a unique experience. The film is an unconventional horror B movie comedy with plenty of laughs, gore, impressive effects (given the budget), awkward moments, and questions that will most likely never be answered.
