Rubber (2010 film)
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Rubber is a 2010 French horror comedy film about a tire that comes to life and kills people with its psychic powers. It was directed and written by Quentin Dupieux. The film was shown at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
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Plot
In the California desert, a tire comes to life and embarks on a killing spree as an audience watches the events unfold through binoculars. The tire kills by vibrating intensely and psycho-kinetically causing people's heads to explode. The audience is poisoned by individuals that seem to be orchestrating the film's events, but one audience member survives, forcing the film to reach its conclusion. A sheriff investigating the murders is inside and outside the diegesis, sometimes participating in the narrative action and sometimes commenting on it.
In the end, the tire is destroyed, but then reincarnated as a tricycle. The tricycle recruits several tires and rolls to Hollywood, where the film concludes.
Cast
- Stephen Spinella as Lieutenant Chad
- Jack Plotnick as Accountant
- Roxane Mesquida as Sheila
- Wings Hauser as Man in Wheelchair
- Ethan Cohn as Movie Buff Ethan
- Charley Koontz as Movie Buff Charley
- Hayley Holmes as Cindy
- Haley Ramm as Fiona
- Daniel Quinn as Dad
- Devin Brochu as Son
- Tara Jean O'Brien as Martina the Cleaning Lady
- David Bowe as Mr. Hugues
- Remy Thorne as Zach
- Cecelia Antoinette as Woman
- Thomas F. Duffy as Deputy Xavier
- Blake Robbins as Deputy Luke
- Pete Dicecco as Deputy Pete
- Courtenay Taylor as Deputy Denise
- James Parks as Deputy Doug
- Gaspard Augé as Hitchhicker
- Pedro Winter as Tire Burner
Release
The film was shown on May 15, 2010 at Cannes Critic's Week. After the film was shown at Cannes, it was picked up for US distribution by Magnet Releases. Rubber has its premiere outside of France on July 9, 2010 at the Fantasia Festival.
Rubber was shown at the Sitges Film Festival where it had a positive reception. The film was shown in Toronto at the After Dark Film Festival. Fangoria magazine stated the film "deeply split" the audience reaction saying that Rubber earned "huge laughs and applause as well as the only boos heard by Fango at the fest."
The DVD and soundtrack were made available to purchase from March 14, 2011 from Ed Banger merchandise website coolcats.fr. The DVD and Blu-ray were also made available to pre-order from other online retailers such as Amazon, to be released June 7, 2011.
Rubber has made over $92,000 in domestic theatres on a limited release as of 6/10/2011.
Reception
The film received mixed reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it received more positive than negative reviews, currently holding a 68%. indieWire called the film "one of the more bizarre experiments with genre in quite some time." and that it "does begin to wear out its welcome around the sixty minute mark, but you can’t blame Dupieux for giving it a shot." The Telegraph wrote a negative review of the film, saying "How could it not be brilliant? By, at 85 minutes, being an hour too long. By being arch rather than schlocky. And by wasting too much time on dull dialogue celebrating its "No Reason" philosophy." Variety also gave a negative review, saying that Rubber is "Neither scary, funny, nor anywhere near as clever as it seems to think it is, pic offers auds few reasons to want to see it beyond its one-joke premise."
Outside Cannes, the film received positive reception at other film festivals. Twitch Film gave the film a positive review saying it was "impeccably shot, scored, and designed" and "The film is intellectual wankery of the highest order in the sheepskin of a B-film of the lowest order". The Huffington Post wrote that Quentin Dupieux "succeeds in creating an entertaining, sometimes even tense horror film with the very same footage he lightly mocks. The result is an uber-cerebral spoof that is at once silly and smart, populist like a mildly trashy B-movie yet high brow like absurdist theater."
