Jon Blistein
Contact Jon Blistein by Email View all posts by Jon Blistein September 22, 2026 Add us as a Google Preferred Source
Add us as a Google Preferred Source 
Stock photo of scary clowns, not featured in the upcoming Hulu doc, 'Clown Panic.' Getty Images So much has happened over the past decade you’d be forgiven for forgetting one of the weirdest things to emerge out of that pivotal, discombobulating, deranged year 2016: Killer clowns.
Late that summer, a spate of alleged clown sightings in Grenville County, South Carolina snowballed into a social media-fueled firestorm, which now feels like a very distinct indicator of exactly where we were headed as a country. Now, to commemorate the unsavory anniversary of this portentous clown show — and dig into what the hell exactly happened — Hulu is prepping a new documentary, Clown Panic, set to arrive Oct. 12.
A new trailer for the film, directed by Ed Perkins, teases the film’s scope, starting with testimonies from some of the people who claimed to see these alleged killer clowns (and aren’t too self-conscious to recreate the eerie, clanging, and guttural sounds that these clowns allegedly made mid-rampage). Very quickly, the trailer descends into chaos, with ostensible “reenactments” of killer clowns lurking in the woods and terrorizing motorists mixed with real archival video of college students forming ad hoc clown-hunting posses and self-styled vigilantes loading guns.
