For the people of Haren, a small town in the Netherlands, the 21st night of September is significant (and it has nothing to do with the music of Earth, Wind & Fire). Nearly 13 years ago, the town made international news when thousands of people showed up to celebrate a 16-year-old’s birthday after the party invite went viral on Facebook.
It was chaos: Rioting injured at least 36 people, and dozens were arrested. In Trainwreck: The Real Project X, out July 8, Netflix explores the making of the party as part of its series on disasters in recent history. It features the birthday girl, Merthe Marije Weusthuis, who is speaking about the party for the first time in 12 years, YouTubers who filmed the party, and local government officials who tried to prevent the party from getting out of hand.
“I am 28 now, and after all these years, I’ve finally decided to tell this story,” Weusthuis wrote on Instagram when she shared a trailer of the Netflix doc. “Despite the renewed scrutiny, harassment, and opinions I’m already preparing for, I’ll at least have spoken in my own voice.”
Here’s how the party went viral.
A public Facebook event
Weusthuis created a public Facebook event for her 16th birthday on Facebook and invited 78 people. As she invited friends, those friends also invited their friends, and it went viral.
When 17,000 people RSVP-ed as attending, she deleted the event. But an 18-year-old man named Jorik Clarck created a copycat event, framed as a surprise birthday party for Weusthuis. It contained references to a popular 2012 movie Project X about a high school party that spun out of control. “I made her Facebook famous,” Jorik brags in Trainwreck.
A friend of Weusthuis who was connected to Jorik on Facebook gave her his number. Her father called Jorik and begged him to take down the event, saying he was concerned for his family’s safety because people were climbing over their fence and taking pictures of their house. Jorik didn’t want to jeopardize Weusthuis’s safety so he deleted his event.
Then, another copycat event came up. When Weusthuis reached out to the admins, urging them to delete the event, they blew her off. As it became clear that this party was going to happen no matter what, local officials started to brainstorm ways to keep it contained. Chris Garrit, the night in the nearby city of Groningen (actually a government official in charge of supervising the city’s nightlife) tells Netflix that he wanted to designate space outside Haren for the party, complete with music and a stage, but Haren’s mayor wouldn’t allow it. He just wanted to broadcast that the party was cancelled.
Weusthuis tells Netflix that she was worried that revelers would burn down her house like in the Project X movie.
The day of the party
By September 21, about 350,000 people had RSVP-ed as attending the event. Weusthuis sought refuge at an aunt’s house outside of Haren.
The doc contains lots of footage of the rowdy crowd. With booze in hand, they chanted “Where’s the party? The party is here!” Boomboxes blasted music on the street.
Police were on high alert for any hijinx, and started closing off streets near the house. A riot broke out. Some footage in the doc shows officers clubbing unruly revelers. People broke car windows and shoplifted.
In the film, a journalist covering the event recalls how he returned to his car to find footprints on the windshield, a window smashed, and a brick on the passenger seat.
“I’ve kept the brick as a souvenir,” he says.
The mayor of Haren, Rob Bats, came under fire for his failure to contain the party, and he ended up resigning.
Why so many people wanted to go to a stranger’s party
At a time when so much socializing was done on social media, people seemed to be excited about a chance to gather in person, and Project X, which was released in March 2012, resonated with and inspired teens. Project X did inspire other real-life parties that spun out of control, from a 2012 rave in Houston, Texas, that resulted in one death to a 2014 party in Canadian Lakes, Michigan, that resulted in several hospitalizations.
Weusthuis says she thinks it’s a very human instinct to want to go to the party. She totally understands that many teenagers eagerly await the moment when they can drink legally and go to parties.
“I don’t think most people who came to the party were intending to riot or commit a crime,” Weusthuis says in the doc. “I think a lot of people came because they wanted a party. I think it’s a normal inherent thing in teenagers around that age, that they want to rebel, take their freedom, express their personalities.”
The movie ends with her saying, “I definitely would have gone if it wasn’t my party.”
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at Trainwreck: The Real Project X&body=https%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F7300639%2Ftrainwreck-real-project-x-netflix%2F” data-ylk=”slk:olivia.waxman@time.com;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas” class=”link rapid-noclick-resp”>olivia.waxman@time.com.
