Rubber

I think Rubber (2010) is one of those movies I can only imagine will yield a niche cult fandom that considers it an absolute masterpiece, seduced by its desperate attempts at being clever. It has this goal in mind to satirize Hollywood film and its attentive audience, as well as, conduct itself as this weird horror film that echoes Cronenberg’s Scanners with its numerous explosions. A rabbit, bird, and human heads all go KABOOM! All this thanks to a tire. This tire just moves in amongst a garbage dump in some desert nearby a low-income inn and starts to roll. It kills and seems to enjoy it. Just writing this absurd nonsense in retrospect, I still wonder what I watched last night. Seeing a tire tremor before some animal or human or bottle/can is about to blow up, with eventual carnage resulting from such psycho-kinetic power, that should be enough weird for any viewer. One step further, this film introduces us to a cop popping out of a car trunk to mention movies and ponders “no reason” behind certain questions he provides to us regarding them. Some dork with binoculars hands them out to a group of people who will be onlookers to the tire’s journey towards the inn and its customers, most of who will be head-explosion victims. The audience, besides Wings Hauser in a wheelchair, eventually tears into meat offered to them after a night’s rest once the tire itself “sleeps” underneath a tree and suffer agonizing poisoning. Then the “no reason” cop attempts to convince the local law enforcement (having arrived at the inn to survey human damage thanks to the tire) that they are all “performing” and can go home (because of the poisoned audience no longer actively watching the “fake” drama unfold), much to their bewilderment. The tire takes to a babe passing through town, and it likes to watch nature channels (when not taking a shower!) in one of the rooms of the inn. You get a lot of “this is just a movie and nothing more” satire, and most of it, to me, landed with a disappointing thud. Trying hard, the filmmakers and performers do, but I just found it all a chore. Wings is that member of the audience who offers his critique towards those involved in the movie and eventually his criticism results in a “total explosion” with nothing left but the twisted metal of what was once a productive wheelchair. By the time we have bodies laying everywhere with heads just a residue of brain matter and bits of skull, and this tricycle moving on its own (with the cop actor taking matters into his own hands as this film he’s a part of just won’t end), with other tires behind it following its lead, I could only throw my hands up. This will no doubt totally work to a certain taste. Some will find it just bizarre and clever in its execution to work. I found it a bore so wanting to consider itself brilliant.