Wrinkles the Clown

I was excited to see this after I saw the trailer, but was severely disappointed. This documentary could've been 10 minutes long. There really is no point. The production quality is good, but that's it. The "twist" in the final half hour is lazy and only served to make me angry. Save yourself the hour and a half and watch something else instead.

This is one of the extremely rare cases where I turned a movie off. It was such an interesting idea, and they completely squandered it. There's no sense of order, you could recut the majority of this movie and it would not make a difference, if it weren't for a twist that rendered the first half of the doc a waste of time.

This is the cinematic equivalent to reading the comments on YouTube video called "scary 3:00 AM challenge". It is largely just kids yapping into cellphone cameras about spooky clowns. They even often fail to give an opinion. It fails at exploring its topic with any kind of depth and comes across as extremely lazy.

Let me save you 78 minutes. See that guy on the poster? Parents can hire him to scare misbehaving children. You learn nothing more by watching this film.

What started off as YouTube video of a clown sliding out from underneath a little girls bed in 2015 turned an unknown man into a viral fascination across Florida.

Wrinkles the Clown is based on an unnamed man who dresses up as a horrifying looking clown and pimps himself out to parents to scare their misbehaving children. If that sentence doesn't sound terrifying enough, then all you need do is to have one look at this guy you'll instantly understand what nightmares are made of.

The documentary goes around to the people across Florida, and we hear their personal opinions and encounters with Wrinkles. The crew interview the man behind the clown makeup, but keep his face out of every camera frame to withhold his identity and build mystery. He goes on to explain how Wrinkles became a character and the responses he has received from the community. Most interviews are focused on the younger children who either share a strong hatred toward Wrinkles or surprisingly idolise the clown. Some kids even go to the lengths of wanting to be just like Wrinkles. A role model if you dare to label.

The documentary doesn't really reveal too much and honestly left me questioning if I learnt anything from Wrinkles besides him being an old man living every day like it's Halloween and scaring young children to make a quick buck. A very interesting choice that may be linked to the clown sightings back in 2016 where people disguised themselves as clowns around schools, side of the road and nearby forests, and would scare anybody who crossed their path.

The idea of Wrinkles the Clown as a character and his objective is interesting, but I feel as though it would've been better off as a small Netflix series that dug deeper into the life and secrets of this man and his stories. I'm intrigued by this mysterious story as I felt there could've been more to share, but on the other hand I wouldn't lose any sleep if I never heard of this character again.

Is this documentary about "Wrinkles the Clown" as a person? Sorta. Is it about the clown hysteria from a few years ago, and how people reacted to it? It could've been with more focus. Is it about the behind the scenes of making modern day folklore? Again, it could've been with more focus. This documentary, as a concept, could've been incredibly interesting if it decided what it wanted to be. Instead it meanders on "clowns are scary" for a good portion of it's runtime. It's shot well, but with odd (and occasionally bad) editing & pacing. If 30-50 minutes were cut from this it would be a much more solid piece (but if they did that it wouldn't be considered "featured length" anymore.) Ultimately, this probably would've been better as an episode of a mini-series about some related theme (modern day/online horror and how people react to it, etc.)

I like the concept of the documentary, it was just boring at parts