Wrinkles the Clown

In 2015, a security camera registered the first performance of Wrinkles the Clown, a frightening figure appearing next to the bed of a sleeping girl. A phenomenon was born: the clown who soon became the embodiment of everything that both attracts and frightens us in horror. Documentary about horror clown Wrinkles plays a brilliant and ambiguous game with reality.

Ever since the release of Stephen King’s IT, the profession of clown has become pretty much synonymous with horror. This ambiguous documentary follows a relative of IT’s Pennywise. A horror clown who can be hired by parents to keep disobedient children in line, but is embraced as a hero and role model by those very same children. Confusing? No more so than the status of Pennywise himself: beloved icon and bogeyman at the same time. And subject of a true media hype. Who – or what – is behind Wrinkles? In the end it’s our morbid fascination with the phenomenon that’s the real subject of this delightfully unsettling film.