It’s hard to forget the calamitous events of the 2021 Astroworld Festival, as what began as a carefree Travis Scott-run concert event quickly spiraled into a harrowing nightmare.
On Nov. 5, 2021, at NRG Park in Houston, a deadly catastrophe had unfolded after a massive crowd surge during Scott’s headlining performance. In the end, 10 people died, aged between 9 and 27, and hundreds more suffered physical injuries as well as emotional turmoil.
In clips that circulated online, attendees screamed for help — cries that they say went unheard — as no one behind the festival stepped in to end the event immediately. There were reports of people crushed in different parts of the overwhelming crowd, experiencing breathing difficulties, and, for some, cardiac arrest.
Netflix revisits that haunting reality in its new documentary, “Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy,” a recollection of the disastrous event as told through interviews with festival attendees, survivors and families of victims whose lives haven’t been the same since that fateful night.
The film recounts the events that led to Astroworld’s safety failures in an attempt to detail where exactly the festival went wrong and who might be to blame, with help from experts and personnel who were involved behind-the-scenes — including the former commander of the Houston Police, Mark Lentini, who maintains that the chaos of the event was “so totally predictable.”
