Wrinkles The Clown (2019) - Movie Review

It can be difficult to think of a time when clowns weren’t terrifying. Between Pennywise from It in its many variations, the even greater variations of the Joker, not to mention those weird clown sightings that kept popping up in 2016, our culture seems to be hardwired to view these harlequins are something to be afraid of. And in Internet circles, there’s a particular clown that keeps being brought up: Wrinkles The Clown, a Florida-based scary clown for hire that parents can call to scare their naughty kids straight.

If you read that last part about adults hiring a complete stranger to scare their kids and thought "abusive", this film detailing the phenomenon that is Wrinkles delves into that realm and… well, it doesn’t so much confirm such things as much as it offers a different perspective. Namely, the point of view of a handful of kid YouTubers who, among other things, have made videos to do with either Wrinkles himself or just creepy clowns in general. As the film delves further into the man behind the Wrinkles mask, what we see of these kids ends up being more in-line with the clown’s true intentions than any of the parental requests. Or the copious death threats that occupy his voicemail.

His place as part of Internet folklore takes up a sizeable amount of the production, as does the look into why clowns have the horror-centric framing that they have nowadays. And the end result is honestly a bit surprising: There might not have even been a time when clowns weren’t scary. Hell, getting back to the initial traumatising angle, chances are that parents have already done this to their kids by accident from hiring birthday clowns.

From the clown’s presence in media (including the Joker, Pennywise, and even Killer Klowns From Outer Space) to the presence of other online boogiemen like Slenderman, even the Halloween mentality where people actually like being scared, it covers a reasonable amount of ground concerning what made this figure the semi-legend that he is.

What results from all this is a look at how urban legends have magnified in the Internet age, how mass media and online discourse can go a long way on relatively little information, and how the olden ways of folklore can blossom into something genuinely beautiful through the Internet. Not even kidding, this film ends on a surprisingly heartfelt note, one that builds on Michael Beach Nichols’ eerie framing to show all sides of the clown, before settling on what he truly is: An idea that the world latched onto, and for as scary as it may be for the kids, they seem to have taken it in stride.