You know who’s more frightening than Pennywise, the dancing clown at the center of It Chapter Two? A real-life clown. Better (worse) yet, a real-life clown named Wrinkles who for the low price of “a few hundred dollars” will come to your house and scare your kids.
A few years ago, a video of a person in a clown mask emerging from underneath a sleeping child’s bed in Florida appeared on YouTube. That’s our Wrinkles! From there, “Florida teenagers shared Wrinkles sightings on social media,” according to the Washington Post. He told the paper, “I showed up across the street from [a trouble-making 12-year-old boy] at the bus stop and he just started crying in front of his friends and ran home. His mother called back a few days later and said ‘Thank you!’ Now when he acts bad, she just has to ask him: ‘Do you want Wrinkles to come back?’”
No, I do not want Wrinkles to come back, but I will watch a documentary about him. Directed by Michael Beach Nichols, Wrinkles the Clown explores the identity of the mysterious amateur Pennywise (the Post only described him as a “65-year-old Rhode Island transplant and military veteran who worked various jobs throughout his career before retiring”). “With incredible access to the mastermind behind the mask, Wrinkles the Clown is a cryptic and playful exploration of these questions, as well as an inside look at myth-building and the unpredictable spread of imagination in the Internet age,” the official plot description reads. Check out the trailer above.
Wrinkles the Clown opens on October 4 after premiering at Fantastic Fest.
