Movie Review : Wrinkles the Clown (2019)
* this review contains spoilers *
In 2015, a YouTube video of home security footage featuring a creepy clown sliding from under a little girl’s bed set the internet on fire. At roughly the same time, stickers with the clown’s face and phone number started appearing around town in Naples, Florida. It was the birth of the first true twenty-first century boogeyman: Wrinkles the Clown. Not only he terrified children, but he inspired even creepier and more dangerous admirers in many American States. Wrinkles the Clown is his story… or the closest thing to a straightforward story this character can have.
Wrinkles the Clown is a documentary within a documentary. Or a mockumentary within a documentary. Whatever, it’s meta-something. For the first forty-five minutes, it tells the story of a lonely old man living out of his van and providing a terror service for parents of naughty children. Then, it does a 180 degrees turn and reveals the old man was a hired actor and that the real wrinkles is a performance artist who wishes to remain anonymous. Wrinkles the Clown is the story of people making Wrinkles the Clown into a boogeyman of their own making. It’s a bit of a mindfuck.
Wrinkles the Clown starts with a 45 minutes segment about an old, almost homeless man who’s terrifying children for money. I can’t think of anything more villainous, but it isn’t true. Co-writer and director Michael Beach Nichols admits it is a complete fabrication before revealing the real story of Wrinkles. But there isn’t a real story of Wrinkles. Everything you’ve heard in media is a complete fabrication too. This is what’s so fascinating about this character: it has two dramatized YouTube videos, one or two media appearances, a well-crafted aesthetic and a voicemail.
Everything else comes from the unsuspecting people’s mind.
Although it’s only 78 minutes-long and padded with long interviews with terrified kids and dramatic reenactment of their fantasies, Wrinkles the Clown makes an excellent point: everything you experience through media (mainstream or social) is or can be constructed. There is no truth about Wrinkles because he’s never done anything. He’s an idea, an image that once belonged to horror movies. Outside of the comfortable context the creepy clown is associated with, people will try to pin another context on him. A rational, but 100% untruthful explanation.
A common perception of disinformation is that it’s a Manichean thing. Some conniving corporation who plants an idea in collective consciousness for an ulterior purpose. The 2016 election proved there is some of that. But there’s also people emotionally reacting to uncomfortable experiences on social media and other people relaying the word because if someone claims to have experienced something, it must be true. So, Wrinkles the Clown is an interesting and perhaps unwitting exploration of unknowability in the internet age.
If you don’t offer truth and clarity, people will make up their own.
Wrinkles the Clown was an uneven viewing at best. But it tapped into major problems related internet and social media usage in 2019. The creator of Wrinkles is lucky that no one was hurt. He inspired a series of copycats throughout the United States. Some tried to lure children into the woods. Others wandered around with machetes. It was a very pertinent and powerful idea, but the emotional reaction to it was chaotic and violent. Wrinkles the Clown is flawed and not always interesting, but it’s pertinent to watch in 2019. Not just for Halloween.
6.8/10
