Wrinkles the Clown

Not the best documentary but worth checking out. Had some good horror moments and if your like everyone else and hates clowns you will be creeped out.

It's not a good sign when a film is only 78 minutes and it still feels extremely stretched out and long. Unfortunately that was the case with 'Wrinkles the Clown'. The funny thing is that I'm very glad this documentary brought the fact that this clown exists to my attention. But once I knew that, the film didn't really have any additional information to offer me that I was interested in. I kept hoping there would be a twist or a shocking addition to the story to come. It never did though and it made for a very dull ride.

While I was watching this I thought to myself that I'd actually enjoy doing this in my region. By the end of the documentary though it had convinced me that that would be a very bad idea. From that point of view I suppose it offered something. Otherwise though I found 'Wrinkles the Clown' very much lacking in justification for a documentary. Have a quick read up about this story instead would be my advice.

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.

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.)

The documentary does a nice job of pacing the storytelling to keep you interested while not rushing through anything.

Takes the form of telling the story of Wrinkles while interjecting interviews with culture and folklore experts, and with everyday kids who find clowns in general, or Wrinkles in particular, interesting.

The tone shifts a couple of times into a darker or more evil tone which I found jarring, and it didn't really add much. I think it could have been done with more nuance or subtlety, which would have more accurately depicted how our culture sees clowns: as more of a trickster with malicious undertones than all out evil.

Overall the pacing, unique storytelling and unique subject matter made this an enjoyable watch that I will remember.