The first horror flick of MIFF for me! I’m a big fan of the genre, so I’ve selected a couple from the list this year. The first just so happens to be written and directed by a well known DJ / Producer by the name of Quentin Dupieux aka Mr Oizo (Yes, ‘Flat Beat’ it is).

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Rubber [France]

I was really surprised that this film about a murderous tyre with psychokinetic powers, had a much larger theme in the movie. Following the concept of ‘No Reason’ for a lot of random occurrances in films (in an amusing speech at the beginning of ‘Rubber’), the story strictly abides by this. Even in it’s absolute absurdity, all you could do is remember that one simple answer to your question: ‘No Reason’.

The film jumps around all over the place, even taking the characters out of the film (so to speak), but somehow it remains coherent enough to follow with the help of useful comments from ‘the audience’ throughout the progression of the plot. It’s really just a mish mash of ideas, all collaborated together as an experiment.

The effects are pretty well done, drawing inspiration for B-Grade classic gore films, and the tyre manages to offer some idea of how it feels from simple ‘gestures’. Put simply, it’s out there. Unfortunately in that regard, the film does not try anything new to add to the genre, instead playing it safe with stuff we’ve already seen.

To conclude, I’m sure that there will be a lot of people that won’t appreciate the film for what it is, but for me, I could summarise the entire film in one line… ‘It’s so bad, it’s good, and why? No reason.’

Score: 2.5 out of 5

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