A discarded tire wakes up in the California desert. It wobbles upright and discovers it can make things explode just by looking at them. First a plastic bottle, then a rabbit, then people.

RUBBER (2010) was written, directed, shot, and edited by Quentin Dupieux, the French musician better known as Mr. Oizo. He made it for $800,000 on a DSLR, and it may be the only horror film that pauses to explain itself before the first kill.

It opens with a man turning to the camera to argue that every great film contains an element of "no reason." Why is E.T. brown? No reason. The killer tire, he is telling you, needs no more justification than that. The movie is a manifesto disguised as a creature feature, and a joke at the expense of manifestos in the same breath.

It does not stop there. Out in the desert, a small crowd stands watching the tire's rampage through binoculars, an audience inside the film mirroring the one outside it. By the end, Rubber is less about a murderous tire than about the odd fact that you sat down to watch one.

What is the most gloriously pointless premise you have ever loved?

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Rubber (2010) was an ultra-low-budget, independent production shot on consumer-grade digital cameras. It was distributed by Magnet Releasing after premiering at the Cannes Film Festival.