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: Storm Area 51 hits Netflix on July 29.
By Elazar Abrahams
In the summer of 2019, an internet joke snowballed into something much bigger than anyone expected. A 20-year-old college student from California created a Facebook event called “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us,” inviting people to raid the secretive U.S. military base in Nevada to “see them aliens.” The post went viral at lightning speed, racking up millions of RSVPs and spawning countless memes, spin-offs, and media coverage. The U.S. Air Force was forced to issue formal warnings, while local authorities scrambled to prepare for a possible influx of people attempting to breach a classified government facility. What actually happened? Not much. A few thousand people showed up to party in the desert, but no one stormed the gates, and the whole thing fizzled out as a good-natured flop.
Trainwreck: Storm Area 51 revisits this moment with a solid mix of humor and curiosity. It’s actually the only Trainwreck installment presented as a two-episode mini-arc rather than a single film, which is a bit odd and seems to suggest Netflix had leftover footage or simply wanted to give this one extra weight. Still, the story holds up as a time capsule of internet culture, showcasing how random people from nowhere can go briefly viral, then return to total obscurity just as quickly.
The documentary doesn’t break any new ground, it’s mostly a fun recap, but it’s enjoyable to revisit the bizarre cast of characters involved. There’s something undeniably charming about the whole thing. Unlike the other disasters covered in this series, there was no riot, no collapse, no tragedy. The “trainwreck” here is simply that the event didn’t live up to the hype, and in a way, that’s what makes it memorable.
If nothing else, Storm Area 51 serves as a quirky reminder of how quickly the internet can spin something into global hysteria, even when the outcome is a collective shrug. It’s a light, breezy conclusion to the Trainwreck summer, and it’s fitting that one of the least serious events got immortalized in this series.
I give Trainwreck: Storm Area 51 a B-.
TV and City 