[CAPSULE REVIEW]

You may have heard that "Rubber" is a movie about a sentient automobile tire that goes around killing people. If so, you have heard correctly! "Rubber" is indeed that.

It is also, however, a dementedly clever deconstruction of horror movies, not to mention a chunk of genuine capital-A Absurdism. Written and directed by Quentin Dupieux -- who is also the French techno musician known as Mr. Oizo -- "Rubber" has an ordinary tire becoming self-aware and rolling around the Southwest, using the power of its mind (?) to cause death. All of this is witnessed by an audience -- not a movie audience sitting in a theater, but an actual live audience, standing in the desert and using binoculars to observe the tire's rampage and the subsequent police investigation in real time.

The 82-minute film feels a bit stretched, but not as much as you'd expect with a premise this odd. The film's trailer quotes CHUD.com's Jacob Hall describing it as "Roger Corman by way of Samuel Beckett." That's an utterly perfect summary, so I won't try to improve upon it.

Grade: B+

Rated R, some harsh profanity, some bloody violence

1 hr., 22 min.

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