It’s Netflix’s “summer of disaster,” with the streamer rolling out a new documentary each week under the Trainwreck anthology banner. Each of the eight films revisits a real-life event that spiraled out of control, from music festival tragedies to viral hoaxes and reality TV fiascos. These stories dominated headlines at the time, and now each of the installments give the ugly tales a deeper dive. At TV and City, we’re covering them all.
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy hits Netflix on June 10.
By Elazar Abrahams
The 2021 Astroworld tragedy was one of the most shocking and preventable disasters in recent music history. Roughly 50,000 fans gathered at Houston’s NRG Park for Travis Scott’s third Astroworld Festival, the first since the pandemic. But it soon became apparent that the festival was dangerously understaffed and poorly organized. As Scott took the stage, the crowd surged forward, resulting in a fatal crowd crush that killed ten people and injured hundreds more. Video footage from the event and subsequent reporting made it horrifyingly clear that both Live Nation and Scott himself failed to stop the show, even after the situation turned deadly. The fallout included lawsuits, widespread outrage, and lingering questions about accountability, though Scott’s career has since rebounded with little public reckoning.
Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy does a competent job of retelling the broad strokes of this horrific night. However, for anyone who followed the story in real time, there is little here that will feel new or revelatory. The film’s one fresh angle comes from interviews with last-minute-hired security staff and support personnel, who paint a damning picture of an event held together by duct tape and desperation. Their first hand accounts underscore just how ill-prepared Astroworld’s organizers were, and how tragically inevitable the disaster became.
To the documentary’s credit, it avoids the worst tendencies of sensational true-crime storytelling. The interviews with loved ones of the victims are handled with care and respect, steering clear of exploitative beats. But that restraint does not translate to deeper insight. Crucial questions, like how Travis Scott managed to regain public favor without taking real responsibility, are left unexamined. The documentary is also somewhat flat and dry, its conventional Netflix polish unable to disguise the lack of a new angle.
At an hour and a half, Astroworld is the longest of the Trainwreck installments, and it feels as though it may not have been originally produced as part of this series. Regardless, it fits thematically, offering a chilling look at corporate negligence and celebrity indifference. It is certainly worth a watch for those unfamiliar with the story, though in this case, that is likely a small audience.
I give Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy a C+.
TV and City 