Film

Fyre Fraud

Hulu's scrappier answer to Netflix's Fyre doc, made fast and dirty to beat its rival to release. It's less interested in festival carnage than in the culture that produced Billy McFarland: influencer marketing, millennial FOMO, the attention economy itself. Jia Tolentino shows up to contextualise the grift. Funnier and more cynical than its competitor, though its decision to pay McFarland for an interview became its own small scandal.

TMDb rating6.4

If you liked this

Fyre2019

The Netflix version of the same disaster, told through the survivors instead of the survivor-in-chief. Watching both is genuinely instructive about how documentary framing shapes truth.

But You'll be retreading the exact same festival, same footage almost, within a week of watching this one.

Fyre poster

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley2019

Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, same charismatic-fraud engine at terrifying medical-stakes scale. Alex Gibney is forensic where Fyre Fraud is gonzo.

But Considerably darker — people's health was on the line, not just their Instagram vacation photos.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley poster

The Tinder Swindler2022

A con man who weaponised charm and social media the same way McFarland did, just aimed at romance instead of festival tickets. Slick, infuriating, very watchable.

But The reenactment style is glossier and less analytical — pure story, less cultural critique.

The Tinder Swindler poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

F for Fake1973

Fyre Fraud is fundamentally about who gets to control a story once it's public; Welles built an entire film around exactly that question, with himself as the con man on screen.

Orson Welles' dazzling essay-film about a master art forger, and about Welles' own history of hoaxing audiences. It invented the playful, self-implicating documentary decades before anyone had a festival to fake.

But Deliberately slippery and non-linear — it toys with you rather than informs you, which some will find maddening.

F for Fake poster
More like this (8)

WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn2021no page yet

Another founder who sold vibes instead of a product and got billions for it. Great on how investors suspend disbelief when the story is good enough.

But Adam Neumann is a stranger, less immediately hateable villain than McFarland — the fraud is slower-burn.

LuLaRich2021

MLM culture examined with the same eye for how ordinary people get talked into believing impossible promises. Bleakly funny and genuinely sad by the end.

But Four episodes rather than one film — a bigger investment for a similar emotional payoff.

LuLaRich poster

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.2022

Somehow even more unbelievable than Fyre — a celebrity chef, a con man claiming immortality, and a restaurant empire built on total fabrication.

But So outlandish it occasionally tips into unintentional comedy rather than serious reckoning.

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. poster

Dirty Money2018

An anthology series on corporate and financial fraud, for when you want the McFarland formula applied to bigger, older, more institutional villains.

But Anthology format means quality varies episode to episode — some entries land harder than others.

Dirty Money poster

Generation Hustle2021no page yet

A whole anthology of millennial grifters and cult leaders, if McFarland's story left you wanting a broader survey of the type.

But Thinner production and less analytical rigor than the films above — more tabloid, less think-piece.

Betting on Zero2016

Herbalife as a pyramid scheme dressed up as opportunity, told through the hedge funder trying to expose it. A quieter, more procedural fraud story.

But Slower and more financial-jargon-heavy than the punchy true-crime docs above — less immediately fun.

Betting on Zero poster

American Animals2018

Both films are interested in unreliable narrators selling you their own legend — McFarland's interview segments in Fyre Fraud do exactly what these real thieves do on camera.

A heist film that keeps cutting to the real perpetrators, decades later, contradicting the dramatized version and each other. It's about how people mythologize their own worst decisions.

But The hybrid documentary-drama structure is unusual and can feel gimmicky if you want a straight story.

American Animals poster

Amy2015

Where Fyre Fraud treats media spectacle as absurd comedy, Amy shows the same attention economy's human cost in deadly earnest — the tonal opposite pointed at the same machine.

Assembled entirely from home footage and paparazzi clips, it shows a young woman consumed by the same fame machine that made McFarland's festival collapse into content. Devastating rather than darkly funny.

But There's no punchline here, no meme to laugh at — it's a genuinely sad film about exploitation and death.

Amy poster

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