Wrinkles the Clown is an interesting concept. A clown goes viral on YouTube when parents hire a clown to scare their kid. This documentary explores the man behind the mask and the phenomenon. Seventy-eight minutes never felt so excruciatingly long. The film sets itself up to be a kind of horror documentary, but it never quite nails or even tries to sustain the tone.
Wrinkles the Clown provides endless montages of people watching his viral videos, parents lauding his behavioral services, and children expressing their fears. I am not the kind of person who enjoys watching videos of people doing something, and the haphazard way that these montages were organized then lasted too long made the whole endeavor excruciating. Just when I thought that the filmmaker was done with the kids talking about their fears, it swings right back around and revisits the children. It even goes so far as to seemingly hire the titular clown to act out their fears so they can be depicted in the documentary.
I am not someone who is automatically charmed by children, and children dominate the commentary. With no closed captioning, the real nightmare is trying to understand what they are saying, and when I did understand what they were saying, trying to care. A missed opportunity is examining how such technologically advanced children can still retain a level of naivety to believe that a clown will turn up in their home and hurt them. Please note that I did not say innocent because I was appalled that parents were amused and permitted their kids to call the titular figure and threaten him on the phone. One parent laughs that his little girl has a gun and will shoot the clown if he comes to her home. Who is the real nightmare? This clown lives in Florida, an open carry state, the home of George Zimmerman, and yet these kids are the terrors. Random question: should a rabbit eat dry cat food? Would someone please report these children to animal DCF? I do not trust them around the fluffy babies. Someone check on that orange marmalade cat.
Wrinkles the Clown occasionally trots out a talking head: a behavioral psychologist, a folklore expert, an analysis of clowns in history and popular culture and a brief snippet of John Wayne Gacy. It is probably the most interesting part of the documentary, but a dive into the deep end of Google would probably reward you with similar commentary.
There is also an attempt to examine similar figures to Wrinkles the Clown that have captured children’s fascination such as Bloody Mary and Slenderman, but it felt like filler, especially since the documentary does not go deeper than the twentieth century to explore older mythological figures like Krampus that terrorized bad children. I feel as if this entire section should have been omitted, or it should have been more comprehensive. It just felt lazy as if the filmmakers did not want to explore anything beyond YouTube. How dare you reference Bloody Mary, but no Candyman! The power of Tony Todd compels you!
The interviews with Wrinkles the Clown feel a little much so if you really feel compelled to watch this documentary, follow my advice. Just watch the last half hour. It retroactively makes everything that preceded it make sense as if someone watched Bad Santa and wondered what it would be like if a Florida Man played him instead of Billy Bob Thornton. By the time that I got there, I did not care, and I love found footage movies and fake documentaries, which this documentary is not…exactly. There is a twist, but you can see it coming and will not exactly be surprised. I am from New York City so I am quite familiar with and appreciate many forms of street art, which includes premade stickers with phone numbers on it. I was immediately reminded of those stickers when I saw the advertisements for his “behavioral services.”
I am the head person who should appreciate this twist and be interested in exploring the phenomenon of the proliferation of clown terror from 2015 through 2016, but by the time that Wrinkles the Clown got there, I was emotionally checked out and hated the documentary. The documentary should have started with the last half hour. The other segments exploring the reaction of the public should have been more rigorously organized and distilled. It was really disappointing that someone who was so conscious of his performance could participate in a documentary that actually made me less interested in this real-life urban legend. Maybe he should have made the documentary given his alleged success in going viral. I only knew that he existed last week, but sure, viral.
Wrinkles the Clown should have stuck to being a television news segment, a headline on a newspaper or a YouTube video. Learning the story behind the alleged phenomenon only made me correctly question if there was really a phenomenon. I love horror films. Do yourself a favor and watch a real horror film. I was riveted by a documentary about parking lot attendants. I am not so hard to please. I am the target audience, and this film missed. I just threw my life away with this one, and worse, my mom joined for me the ride so two people wasted their time. Don’t be us. Run from Wrinkles the Clown—not in terror, but from boredom.