Wrinkles the Clown (2019, directed by Michael Beach Nichols)
- The viral beginnings:
- Wrinkles first appeared in 2014 YouTube videos showing a clown emerging from beneath a child’s bed and other “found footage”–style scares.
- These videos quickly went viral, fueling urban legend–style speculation about whether Wrinkles was real, hired by parents, or simply internet performance art.
- The “business model”:
- A phone number was circulated with the Wrinkles persona. Parents could allegedly call to “hire” him to frighten misbehaving children.
- The voicemail line became infamous — thousands of calls were logged, many from kids daring each other to call Wrinkles.
- Identity mystery:
- The figure of Wrinkles was deliberately kept ambiguous, adding to the mythos.
- Early promotional material implied he was a retired man in Florida who donned the mask for extra income. The film later reveals that this “Wrinkles” was an actor cast to deepen the mystique.
- Key players:
- Cary Longchamps (originator): attempted to get a movie made about Wrinkles, but ended up failing when he earned only $4000 out of the proposed $45,000 he was looking for on Kickstarter.
- Michael Beach Nichols (director): known for Welcome to Leith and Flex Is Kings, he specializes in documentaries about fringe subcultures.
- Christopher K. Walker (editor/producer): longtime collaborator with Nichols, shaping the narrative into a hybrid of documentary and mockumentary.
- D.B. Lambert: The fake Wrinkles – a former law-enforcement agent and a-time All American Heavyweight wrestler with an imposing height of 6′ 6″ whose movie career… hasn’t taken off. He was in something called Population Purge that you can find on Tubi and Plex, so… yeah. I skimmed through it, of course, and yeah, you may have to watch it soon.
- The anonymous creator(s) of the Wrinkles persona: never fully revealed, maintaining the art project’s aura of mystery.
- Mockumentary twist:
- For most of the runtime, the film plays as a straight doc about Wrinkles’ effect on children, parents, and pop culture.
- In the final act, it’s revealed that much of what the audience thought was vérité was staged performance — Wrinkles is more conceptual art and viral myth than a single man’s side hustle.
- The wider context:
- The film landed during the “creepy clown” panic of the mid-2010s, when sightings of clowns across the U.S. caused moral panic and news coverage. Wrinkles was sometimes blamed as a catalyst.
- Nichols uses Wrinkles as a jumping-off point to explore themes of fear, parenting, punishment, and the internet’s ability to spin folklore in real time.
Reflections on the Film
- Narrative twist – The documentary initially presents itself as a straightforward investigation into a mysterious clown who parents hire to scare misbehaving children. About an hour in, it flips into a mockumentary, revealing that the character was an art project and that the earlier footage was fabricated. This structural shift can feel jarring and may leave viewers wondering which parts are real.
- Authenticity of the children – There’s ambiguity over whether the kids shown calling Wrinkles or reacting to his videos are genuine subjects or actors playing roles. This uncertainty adds to the confusion but also mirrors the viral nature of the Wrinkles phenomenon; online, people often accept sensational content at face value without knowing its origins.
- Ethical concerns – Watching parents deliberately terrify their children raises ethical questions about using fear as a disciplinary tool. The film documents parents phoning Wrinkles to threaten their kids or showing them disturbing videos of the clown emerging from under a bed. Even when the goal is to correct behaviour, the distress on the children’s faces suggests potential psychological harm.
Punishment as a Theme
- Parents weaponizing Wrinkles
- Several parents are shown calling Wrinkles’ voicemail line and threatening their kids with his services — essentially saying “if you don’t behave, I’ll have Wrinkles come get you.”
- This turns Wrinkles into a tool of discipline and fear rather than simple entertainment, echoing folkloric “bogeyman” figures.
- Children’s visible terror
- The documentary includes footage of kids screaming and crying when confronted with Wrinkles imagery or the idea that he might come for them.
- Some children looked genuinely traumatized — one girl hides under blankets, another begs her parents not to call him.
- Confusion between reality and performance
- Kids interviewed often aren’t sure whether Wrinkles is “real,” which makes the fear more potent.
- The blending of viral videos, word-of-mouth, and parental reinforcement blurred the line between fiction and reality in a way that amplifies Wrinkles’ impact.
- Parents’ rationale
- Some parents frame using Wrinkles as an “old school” discipline method — akin to scare tactics their own parents might have used (“eat your vegetables or the monster will come”).
- Others seem disturbingly gleeful about how effective the fear is in controlling their children.
- Criticism within the film
- Psychologists and critics raise concerns that Wrinkles crosses into child abuse — instilling extreme fear instead of teaching boundaries.
- This mirrors broader debates about punishment through fear vs. discipline through guidance.
So Wrinkles, as the film shows, isn’t just a viral oddity — he’s also a case study in how adults manipulate folklore and fear to enforce behavior, with kids often caught in the middle, unsure what’s real and what’s performance.
Parallels with Inuit Folklore
Purposeful Fear vs. Entertainment
Inuit cautionary tales often use frightening figures, but these stories are rooted in communal safety rather than shock value. For example:
- Qallupilluit/Qalupalik – Parents warn children not to wander near thin ice by telling them about the qallupilluit, scaly creatures who wait below the floe to snatch the unwaryuphere.ca. Such stories protect children from real environmental hazardsinuitartfoundation.org.
- Mangittatuarjuk – Legends of the head‑eating ogress who lures children with colourful stones keep youngsters from straying far from camp, where predators and harsh conditions pose dangersuphere.ca.
- Mahahaa – A demon with a permanent grin that tickles victims to death roams in winter; elders teach that travellers can survive by staying alert and outwitting himinuitartfoundation.org. This encourages caution during solitary journeys.
These monsters embody natural threats—thin ice, predators, hypothermia—and social rules, such as staying close to family and respecting elders. The fear they evoke is balanced by clear moral lessons and strategies to avoid harm.
Exploitation of Fear
“Wrinkles the Clown” parallels the bogeyman trope but departs from Inuit practices in several ways:
- Commercialization of discipline – The Wrinkles persona was marketed online and via stickers on street lamps. Parents could call a phone number to summon him, turning the bogeyman into a quasi‑service. Inuit tales, in contrast, are shared within the community and are not commodified.
- Ambiguous intent – The film suggests that Wrinkles’ creator intended to critique viral celebrity culture and parental reliance on fear, yet the scenes show parents using his image to threaten children. The moral lesson is muddled and appears to prioritize a viral “prank” over the child’s well‑being.
- Lack of context – Inuit cautionary tales come with explanatory frameworks: elders explain why the Qallupilluit takes children, how to avoid the Mahahaa, and when to watch for an amautalik. In the film, children see a frightening clown without understanding the purpose beyond “be good.” There is no cultural grounding or survival knowledge conveyed.
The stark difference in intent raises questions about punishment and fear:
- Proportionality – Inuit stories use fear to prevent life‑threatening behaviour; the stakes justify strong warnings. In “Wrinkles,” some parents seem to use fear to correct relatively minor misbehaviour, which may be excessive.
- Agency – In many Inuit tales, clever protagonists outsmart the monster. This empowers children by showing that knowledge and bravery can overcome fearinuitartfoundation.org. The Wrinkles scenario offers no such agency; the clown is an unstoppable figure deployed by adults.
- Cultural role – Inuit legends serve broader communal functions—teaching respect for the land, elders and traditions. Wrinkles is a viral meme stripped of context, designed to shock viewers and generate YouTube hits.
Bottom Five Punishments;
So, when we came up with “Bottom Five Punishments,” I hit a wall. I was spinning my wheels, trying to think of random punishments in movies, and then it clicked: why not just live in Yorgos Lanthimos land for a while? Because really, no director obsesses over punishment quite like this guy. Whether it’s society turning single people into animals, a family cursed to die one by one, or a Queen punishing her closest friends for sport, Lanthimos has made punishment the backbone of his films. So yeah, my entire Bottom Five is him — five different movies, five very different forms of punishment, all equally messed up.
5. The Favourite (2018) This isn’t punishment in the “spare the rod” sense — it’s punishment as social warfare. Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne spends half the movie punishing Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz), her long-time confidante, for speaking hard truths. When Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) shows up, Anne punishes her too, usually right after promoting her. People get banished, humiliated, slapped, and shoved into mud — and that’s just before lunch. The whole court runs on this cycle of reward and cruelty, where being close to the Queen means you’re also first in line for punishment. Fun fact: Colman won the Oscar for Best Actress here, and in her acceptance speech she actually thanked Lanthimos for “the best experience of my life.”
4. Kinds of Kindness (2024) This one’s a triptych, and everyone’s punished in some way. In the first story, Jesse Plemons plays a guy whose boss (Willem Dafoe) controls everything he does — who he eats with, when he has sex, what car he drives — and punishes him if he strays even a little. Then Emma Stone’s character is punished by a cult when she fails their bizarre loyalty tests. And in the final story, Plemons punishes himself chasing after a supposed miracle-worker, with Stone right there enabling the madness. Lanthimos loves to show how punishment is baked into the very structure of these relationships — it’s not the exception, it’s the rule. Fun fact: This was Stone and Lanthimos’s third collaboration after The Favourite and Poor Things, and it earned her the Best Actress prize at Cannes.
3. The Lobster (2015) Colin Farrell checks into the infamous hotel where the rule is simple: find a partner within 45 days, or be turned into an animal of your choice. That’s the headline punishment. But there are smaller ones too — masturbate and you get your hand shoved in a toaster, step out of line and you’re tranquilized like game. Even the loners in the woods (led by Léa Seydoux) punish rule-breakers with equal brutality: blinding, mutilation, or exile. So whether you’re in the “official” world or the rebellion, it’s punishment all the way down. Fun fact: Farrell gained about 40 pounds for the role, and the film won the Jury Prize at Cannes.
2. Dogtooth (2009) Here, Christos Stergioglou plays a father who keeps his adult children locked inside their house, inventing a whole fake world for them. Step out of line and you’re punished — maybe beaten with a VHS tape, maybe bloodied for talking back. At one point, he kills a stray cat right in front of the kids, framing it as a terrifying monster to reinforce obedience. Even the so-called “rewards” aren’t much better: little trinkets or treats that keep the kids believing his lies. It’s a world where punishment isn’t just discipline — it’s literally the foundation of their entire reality. Fun fact: Dogtooth won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, and its Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination put Lanthimos on the international map.
1. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) Barry Keoghan plays Martin, a creepy teenager who calmly informs heart surgeon Steven (Colin Farrell) that one of his family members has to die to pay for a past mistake. If Steven refuses, then Nicole Kidman and their kids (played by Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic) are punished with a grotesque checklist: first they lose the ability to walk, then they can’t eat, then they go blind, and finally they die. The entire film is this suffocating countdown of punishments, with Martin acting like some smug executioner of fate. Fun fact: Lanthimos and co-writer Efthimis Filippou were inspired by Euripides’ play Iphigenia in Aulis — basically a Greek tragedy dressed up as a modern psychological horror.