FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened premieres Friday, January 18 on Netflix.
Let’s get this out of the way right at the top: Fyre Festival’s entire “dramatic irony/poetic justice” spiral into chaos and degradation is hilarious. It was 2017’s gift to all us snarky, schadenfreude-seeking hellhounds, and the entire delicious ordeal played out perfectly in real time on Twitter. It was the best horror comedy in ages. And the new Netflix documentary, FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, certainly leans into this aspect. It knows what we all want to see. But, thank goodness, it’s also more than that.
Yes, we want to watch self-important social media influencers suffer some form of humiliating comeuppance. We want the wealthy, beautiful, and carefree to experience extreme levels of discomfort and inconvenience. It’s the dream. And you’ll definitely get that in FYRE. There’s an appropriate build-up, about an hour’s worth, and then – BAM! – hundreds of rich, selfie-obsessed youths get hit with sopping wet hurricane tents, vile food, and an inability to escape from a place ill-equipped to care for them. It was a brand of catfishing in a way, but for VIP villas, yacht parties, and celeb-adjacent activities. And yes, it was criminally great that one dude with a couple hundred followers on Twitter was able to go viral with that image of the dreaded, sloppy cheese sandwich and have it topple all the work done by Instagram influencers with millions in their tribe.
Source: IGN.com FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened Review