An irresistibly delirious horror/comedy that's hard to take seriously

In the heart of the Californian desert, a car tire lies motionless in the dust. Suddenly, without any rational explanation, the tire begins to vibrate, lifts slightly, falls back, and tries again. Like a newborn learning to walk for the first time, Robert – the name viewers will give him – learns to roll. At first, he wobbles and tips over, but he always gets back up with determination. Soon he moves autonomously and begins his exploration of the surrounding world.

During this wandering under the relentless desert sun, Robert discovers other forms of life: a scorpion he crushes with satisfaction, a rabbit he observes with curiosity, a plastic bottle he encounters on his path. And it is through these bizarre encounters that Robert makes a discovery that will change everything: he possesses devastating telekinetic powers. By concentrating intensely – that is, by vibrating with immense effort – he can make any object, inanimate or not, (that) is in his way explode.

Meanwhile, a heterogeneous group of spectators, sitting on chairs in the middle of nowhere and equipped with binoculars, observe from a distance the "adventures" of this killer tire that begins to leave an increasingly long trail of blood behind it.

Rubber: Dream or Reality?

If the synopsis we have just presented seems too delirious to be true, you still don't know the cinema of Quentin Dupieux. Or perhaps you only know his parallel musical career, where he is known as Mr. Oizo and at the end of the new millennium achieved resounding success with the electronic hit Flat Beat, whose video starred the iconic puppet Flat Eric.

Rubber, the film we are discussing in this article, is not his absolute debut in a feature film but the title that launched him, becoming an instant cult and still able to feel fresh and captivating as it did upon its release in 2010. A horror-comedy about a killer tire, an idea worthy of the wildest b-movies, capable of polarizing tastes and moods during its eighty minutes of viewing, which certainly do not leave one indifferent.

Here, the viewer is asked to abandon any expectation of conventional narrative logic, to accept the impossible as a given, in the name of a true foundational philosophical principle that everything can, or rather must, happen. The anarchic device of the film-within-a-film, with that audience observing Robert from a distance, works on multiple levels, posing as a meta-cinematic reflection on the passive consumption of entertainment by the public, who are literally fed so that they continue to watch the growing slaughter.

A Hilarious Massacre to the Beat

The soundtrack, curated by Dupieux/Mr. Oizo himself, as it could not be otherwise, is perfect: minimalist, synth-driven, ideally in tune to accompany the increasingly senseless actions of the protagonist. Some may ponder what sense there is in a tire that kills people, but Rubber has the great merit, by no means obvious, of never descending into self-serving parody, but rather opening itself to multiple unprecedented interpretations. There is, in fact, a formal seriousness that delightfully contrasts with the nonsense of the content, creating that cognitive tension which is the French director's trademark and which in at least a handful of situations keeps you on the edge of your seat.

Watching Rubber with hindsight, after seeing the future evolution of Dupieux's style, it takes on even greater importance. All the author's thematic and stylistic obsessions are already present and recognizable here in embryonic form: radical absurdity that rejects causal logic, meta-cinema that constantly questions its own mechanisms, the obsession with objects that take on a life of their own, ruthless narrative economy, the use of actors who perform with an almost alienating naturalness in completely unnatural dialogues. All in the name of a paradoxical that becomes normality, dragging the viewer into a unique and fascinating context, of complete abstraction from reality to immerse oneself in alternative worlds similar to ours, but which follow other directives and other rules.

What Will Be and What Was

Just think of Deerskin (2019) where a jacket will "possess" its wearer, the giant fly in Mandibles (2020) treated as a pet, or the scruffy superheroes, grappling with an impending apocalypse, in Smoking Causes Coughing (2022). But in general, Dupieux's entire filmography thrives on oddities that transform into practice, in a journey that continually offers surprises even when it approaches biopics, with an always peculiar tone, as in the case of Daaaaaalí! (2023). Let's remember, however, that despite what one might believe, Dupieux is an author also loved by festival juries: his penultimate Le Deuxième Acte (2024) was selected as the opening film at the relevant edition of the Cannes Film Festival, while the very fresh The Piano Accident (2025) was screened these days at the Rome Film Fest.

But to approach it, one must start with Rubber, in the spirit of the motto "where it all began". It is the manifesto work from which everything started, the declaration of intent that laid the foundations for every subsequent work. And it is also, perhaps, the most divisive film: either you embrace it completely, succumbing to its kitsch but never futile charm, accepting the crazy pact that is proposed, or you reject it as an empty and pretentious exercise in style. There are no half measures with Rubber, and that is precisely what makes it so precious.