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This Halloween, forget Pennywise and The Joker, because nothing scares kids these days more than Wrinkles the Clown. Who is Wrinkles the Clown? Wrinkles is an anonymous middle-aged man from Naples, Florida. He wears a polka-dot suit and a terrifying, wrinkly clown mask that he bought online. He’s a professional clown, but not in the traditional sense: He terrorizes for money, so if you misbehave, you better watch out, because your parents have the Wrinkles the Clown phone number and they’re not afraid to use it. Is Wrinkles is real? You’ll have to find out by watching his new documentary, Wrinkles the Clown, which after a limited week-long theatrical release is now available on VOD and digital. (You can rent it on YouTube, Prime Video, Google Play or Vudu for $5.99.)

For the first 20 minutes of the Wrinkles the Clown documentary, director Michael Beach Nichols wants you to feel terrified. He starts with an overview of the internet phenomenon that is Wrinkles the Clown, which started as a 2014 YouTube video. Said video, which claims to be CCTV footage, shows Wrinkles climbing out from under the bed of a little girl, then cuts off, leaving it up to the viewer to imagine what horrors might have occurred next. Then more videos of Wrinkles popped up: Wrinkles standing on the side of the road, waving menacingly. Wrinkles climbing out of the bushes in a family’s backyard, terrorizing their game night.

Beyond YouTube videos, Wrinkles’s advertising campaign consisted of stickers, flyers, and posters with his phone number posted around town in Naples, Florida. Call the number— 407-734-0254, it still works!—and you’ll get a recording of a Rick Sanchez-sounding man who tells you to leave a message with a bone-chilling clown chuckle.

Nichols interviews locals who claim to have seen Wrinkles wandering around town in his clown suit. We hear voice message after voice message of parents asking the clown to come and pick up their misbehaving child, while their child screams in terror in the background. Of course, kids love nothing more than to scare and be scared, so the story of Wrinkles, the terrifying version of Elf-on-the-Shelf, quickly spread online. A few years ago, it was trendy to film yourself calling the Wrinkles number and post your reaction video on YouTube. Like Slenderman and the Momo Challenge, Wrinkles the Clown was a new modern ghost story. He even became national news. The difference? Wrinkles is real.

Or at least, that’s the stance the first half of the Wrinkles the Clown documentary takes, by featuring interviews with a man we’re supposed to believe is the real deal. Though we never see his face, we do see his body, which is flabby, pale, and often covered in food stains. This man is almost a cartoon-ish stereotype of Florida “trailer trash:” He cooks hot dogs in his mobile home, slops food into a dirty dog bowl for his dog, and grunts in his Wrinkles-voice that “no one would hire him when he was just a regular clown,” rather than a terrifying one.

But keep watching. You can’t make a documentary these days without some kind of big reveal, and perhaps it’s a slight but necessary spoiler to say that the Wrinkles the Clown plot twist is so significant, it makes the first half of the film feel like a dirty trick. The film should have been a 30-minute special rather than a feature film, but there is still a story in there worth hearing. And it is definitely a scary one, but not for the reasons you might think. Kids’ fascination with dark, twisted, and violent stories is nothing new, nor is parents using said stories to their advantage. But Nichols’s documentary ultimately reminds us that it’s easier than ever for people to fake these stories. You don’t even need fancy technology. The real puppet master behind Wrinkles may be benign, but the next one might not be.

Where to stream Wrinkles the Clown