Kia Soul Makes Strangers Stare

The new Kia Soul is so compelling you will want to look deeper. And to depict this in the most obvious way possible, Publicis/Toronto came up with "Peer Into a Soul."

Each spot tackles the concept with a different film genre, a gimmick meant to appeal to people who want something more from their car marketers.

The campaign DP is Robert Yeoman, who worked on The Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic and The Squid and the Whale, so we naturally expected the pieces to ooze some sub-normal slice-of-lifishness -- like that feeling you get when a joke's been told but was so subtle you didn't laugh, and now all the hipsters know you Do Not Belong.

The humor here isn't quite that sublime (and for good reason -- they're car ads, after all), but the choice of music definitely oozes Yeoman.

See "Well," the quirky Great Adventure Gone Wrong (complete with Western soundtrack and copious use of beige!):

See "Mobsters," where Snatch meets Scarface without transcending a G-rating:

And see "Cabin," a stock horror-and-hotties flick, except the naughty girl never dies and the masked villain spends the night staring into his victims' car:

Pssst, Kia: You know what would be good? Promoting a discount on tinted windows.