Netflix and Hulu both released documentaries about the abortive Fyre Festival. I STRONGLY recommend you watch "Fyre" instead, as it really is all about the festival and why it failed...whereas "Fyre Fraud"...well, I really couldn't tell exactly what it was trying to say.

The Fyre Festival was supposed to be a huge and exclusive musical extravaganza for the rich and internet influencers. However, instead of providing an expensive but amazing event, audience members were essentially abandoned on a tiny island with almost no food, water or accommodations....and no music! Ultimately, the man behind this massive fraud was jailed....and many folks got nothing for their money...with tickets sometimes selling for many thousands of dollars for nothing.

I decided to watch "Fyre Fraud" because I wanted to find out more about the infamous Fyre Festival and why it was such an abysmal failure. Sadly, however, the focus seldom is on the festival and the film itself is incredibly annoying a badly made. Too often instead of addressing the subject matter, the film instead tossed in TV clips that have NOTHING to do with the festival nor the huckster who organized it. To make it worse, there are more edits per minute than any documentary I can recall...making it a film that leaves you exhausted and frustrated...and confused.

The other huge problem I have with this film is that they paid the criminal behind the festival and gave him a platform AND cash to tell his side. Considering he perpetrated a massive scam and was convicted for this, allowing him this platform just seemed wrong. And the defrauded influencers and rich young people...well, they were hardly mentioned at all nor were allowed to tell their stories.

Overall, a shallow and horribly written and produced film....sort of like the Fyre Festival of documentaries!

"In the millennial era, scamming is the air we breathe." - Jia Tolentino, writer for the New Yorker

'Fyre Fraud' tells the story of a con man pretty well, and also puts it into the larger context of the current generation and social media. Between the cons, enablers, internet influencers, and the entitled, all of them reeking of incredible selfishness, it made me want to weep for humanity.

Interestingly, "Fyre Fraud" was released on Hulu a few days before the Netflix documentary on the same subject, the latter of which is the first one I watched.

I found it so compelling that I rushed to watch "Fyre Fraud", having read that both docs had plenty of interesting footage to offer, with this one including an actual interview with the con artist behind the scam, Billy McFarland.

Clips of the interview are inserted here and there, but to be perfectly honest, do not provide much insight or reveal anything shocking, besides providing somewhat satisfactory cringey moments where McFarland seems to be sweating bullets and is seen stuttering in embarrassment after being asked certain questions that he obviously won't/can't answer due to ongoing lawsuits. The tone is not overly confrontational, but they did not shy away from asking tricky questions.

While the Netflix piece had a well-organized, countdown type of structure that documented the lead-up to this disastrous event in great detail then depicted the event itself, both with plenty of on-site footage, "Fyre Fraud" uses a different approach, instead focusing on everything surrounding the event and the more philosophical questions that this literally empty shell raises: is this, to a greater extent, the result of a culture of emptiness? And while "Fyre Fraud" is certainly inferior as far as narrative structure is concerned, it digs deeper than the Netflix doc in its study of "influencers" and millennial culture. While they do not get that much screen time, there are two interviews with influencers who attended the event (no clue what their names are) who, after being candidly asked what an influencer is and how they would describe their "brand" (which is basically themselves and the "lifestyle" that they document, one heavily filtered picture at a time),both answered "positivity" after hesitating for a moment, struggling to find a meaning to something blatantly meaningless.

There are several other people being interviewed, only a minority of which are also interviewed in the Netflix doc. As such, it was interesting to get different perspectives and, in many aspects, both documentaries are very interesting in their own right and could very well have been merged into one lengthy piece. Anyhow, as I was not familiar with the lead-up to the event and how it all unfolded, I'm happy I got to watch both docs in that order, as "Fyre Fraud" really focuses on the fraudulent aspect of it rather than all the cringe-worthy logistic and administrative failures that led to the disaster. My suggestion would be to watch both docs, starting with Netflix's. That way, with "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened", you'll get a really satisfactory depiction of the facts, including plenty of on-site footage prior to the event and during the event, and then, with "Fyre Fraud", you'll get a better picture of the aftermath, as well as an interesting, more in-depth sociological analysis of the psychological and behavioral traits of a delusional generation obsessed with flashing pictures of a luxurious lifestyle that a serial con man was able to successfully exploit.

On its own, "Fyre Fraud" might feel a bit incomplete if you're looking for actual footage of this disaster. However, as a complement to "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened", it is highly satisfactory and completes the Netflix piece's deficiencies in terms of social commentary.

That being said, if you have to choose between the two, I would suggest "Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened".