Latest news with #MertheWeusthuis
Tom's Guide
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Tom's Guide
Netflix's latest 'Trainwreck' documentary about a party gone horribly wrong just hit No. 2 in the top 10
Netflix's "Trainwreck" documentary series has been anything but a trainwreck for the streaming service. Last week alone, two of its documentary films were in the Netflix Global Top 10 for movies, with a combined 14.9 million views. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised to see the latest film in the series — "Trainwreck: The Real Project X" — is already surging up the top 10 this week. After all, it was one of my top picks from all the new shows and movies on Netflix this week. Still, there's no denying that hitting the No. 2 spot after just one day is no mean feat, and it means that this documentary about a party from hell is officially a must-watch. Here's what you need to know about "Trainwreck: The Real Project X" and why you won't be able to turn away from this entertaining documentary. If you've never seen one of Netflix's "Trainwreck" documentaries before, the film series explores some of the more interesting moments in recent history where things went totally wrong. The most famous example to date might be "Trainwreck: Poop Cruise," which covered a 2013 incident on a Carnival cruise ship where an engine room fire turned the ship into a floating septic tank. In "Trainwreck: The Real Project X," the series examines the events of a 2012 party in the town of Haren in the Netherlands. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Dutch teenager Merthe Weusthuis originally was hoping for a small party with her family and friends for her Sweet 16. But when she accidentally set the Facebook event to public instead of private, the event went viral and thousands started accepting her invitation. Things got so out of hand that by the night of the party, she and her mother left town and watched the night's events unfold on TV. What they saw turned out to be the party from Hell. Despite its name, Weusthuis's hijacked Sweet 16 wasn't the inspiration for the 2012 movie "Project X" starring Miles Teller. That movie's inspiration has long been believed to be based on the 2008 party of 16-year-old Australian Corey Worthington, though people associated with the movie have never confirmed this. No, this party, dubbed "Project X Haren," instead drew inspiration from the film, and the results were nearly as disastrous. You'll have to watch "Trainwreck: The Real Project X" to get all the sordid details, but the party of thousands ultimately led to riots and police detained dozens, but not before the damage was already done. The good news for you is that this out-of-control party was 13 years ago, and by all accounts, those involved have had time to move on. So you can watch this "Trainwreck" without guilt. Watch "Trainwreck: The Real Project X" on Netflix now Malcolm has been with Tom's Guide since 2022, and has been covering the latest in streaming shows and movies since 2023. He's not one to shy away from a hot take, including that "John Wick" is one of the four greatest films ever made. Here's what he's been watching lately:
Cosmopolitan
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
Netflix's Trainwreck: Where is Merthe Weusthuis of The Real Project X now?
While the days of Facebook events and good house parties seem like a lifetime ago, one woman who is probably (read: definitely) celebrating the end of this bygone era is Merthe Weusthuis. Merthe Weusthuis is at the centre of Netflix's latest documentary, The Real Project X, which tells the true story of how a small Sweet 16 party devolved into riots that took over a quaint Dutch town. If you've already taken a deep-dive into the true story behind Netflix's The Real Project X, here's everything you need to know about Merthe Weusthuis' life since then. To recap, Netflix's Trainwreck: The Real Project X follows the true life events of a private party that went viral on Facebook in 2012, resulting in 350,000 RSVPs and town-wide riots. Although the police were deployed to close off the streets and contain the party as much as possible, a riot broke out and people quickly began breaking car windows, setting public property alight, and looting from nearby stores. Luckily, no one died during the event, but at least 36 people were injured and, according to Netflix's documentary, 100 people were arrested after police reviewed footage from the night. Of those arrested, 17 were charged with "crimes related to the riots". Marije Weusthuis from Haren, Netherlands, created a Facebook event for her upcoming Sweet 16 birthday party. The teen intended to just invite her close family and friends, but mistakenly set the invite to public and it quickly went viral. After thousands RSVPd to her invite, Weusthuis removed the event from the social platform but by this point it was too late. Copycat events had sprung up across Facebook and as the day of the party drew closer, hundreds of thousands of partygoers planned to attend. On the night of the event, Weusthuis and her mother fled the family home and sought refuge with family – watching the party unfold via TV broadcast – while her father stayed to protect the property and support their neighbours. Since the events of 21 September 2012, Merthe Weusthuis has been reflecting on how her Sweet 16 devolved into a party that attracted worldwide attention. "When I turned 16, my birthday party was hijacked and blew up to what infamously became known as 'Project X Haren', named after the popular movie released that same year," she wrote in a post on Instagram ahead of the Netflix documentary's release. Going on to say how the story "rapidly captured" the world's attention, Weusthuis explains why after more than a decade, she's finally ready to share her side. "For 12 years, I declined every request for comments, interviews, talkshow performances, documentaries, podcasts, and more," she went on. "I preferred being able to finally move through the world anonymously again, writing my own story without others always filling in the blanks for me, defining me. It's easy to think you 'know' someone just because of a single story, and the internet is an unforgiving place." "I am 28 now and after all these years, I've decided to finally tell this story," she added. "This story does not define me. But it is still mine to tell. It is still a part of who I am. Despite the renewed scrutiny, harassment, and opinions I'm already preparing for, I'll at least have spoken in my own voice." Weusthuis has kept a very low profile since the events of 21 September 2012, only now going public with the release of Netflix's documentary. In it, she reveals she has rarely returned to her hometown, or the Netherlands at all, for fear of judgement and publicity. "Nowadays, I don't come home that much anymore," she says in the episode. "I don't think the Dutch have forgotten what happened." Weusthuis currently lives in Dubai, where she works for a firm specialising in AI, according to her LinkedIn. Further social media sleuthing also shows she recently married, with Instagram posts of her big day in 2024. You can stream Netflix's Trainwreck: The Real Project X on Netflix now.
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘The Wendy house burnt down': My 16th birthday party from hell
'F---, it's getting crazy now!' says a wide-eyed partygoer as a car goes up in flames in the Netflix documentary Trainwreck: The Real Project X. It's a parent's worst nightmare: a girl posts a 16th birthday party invitation on Facebook, which subsequently goes viral, and thousands of drunkards turn up at the front door. I should know – because, at the same age, I also thought it would be a good idea to publicly advertise my party on Facebook. Let's just say my parents, who arrived home from a trip to the Yorkshire coast to find our belongings stolen and the Wendy house ablaze in the garden, weren't best pleased. The Real Project X tells the story of Merthe Weusthuis, a middle-class Dutch girl who, back in 2012, made a Facebook event for her birthday celebrations in the wealthy small town of Haren, near Groningen. She expected that only her friends would see the invite, but she'd inadvertently made the event public. More than 300,000 revellers clicked 'going'. Her parents desperately tried to cancel the event, but 4,000 drunk teenagers descended, and when they realised there was no party to attend, a riot ensued. It was even reported in the Telegraph at the time. 'Posh' Haren, we're told, was transformed from an idyllic neighbourhood to a war zone: cars were flipped and set on fire; protective fences erected by police were pulled down and trampled on; local shops had their windows smashed and contents looted. Grainy footage from the event – who knew cameras in 2012 would look so ancient less than two decades on? – shows young people chanting and downing alcohol, dancing and kissing in the street. In the film (which follows the Trainwreck strand's equally shocking series' about an infamous ' poop cruise ' and the violence that engulfed Woodstock '99), Merthe herself reflects on how, as a teenager, all she wanted was to be popular, but how the infamy gained by the event caused her to move away from her hometown for good. It made her a laughing stock among fellow Dutch people and her family pariahs, while the town's mayor at the time, Rob Bats, was forced to resign (he refused to appear in the documentary). Of course, teenagers are prone to making stupid decisions. Take the time I pierced my friend's lip with a rusty earring in the school bathroom before a Paramore concert, aged 14, or when I thought it would be fun to dye half of my hair pink. But top of the 'I can't believe I did that' low points is when I chose to make the Facebook event for my 16th birthday party – a party my parents had no clue I was hosting – at my very average-sized house, 'public'. The original guest list had included around 80 school friends – out of the 250 total people in my year group – but, in a fit of teenage girl anxiety that not enough people would show up and I'd be branded a loser for eternity, I opted for the 'public' invitation. Spoiler: a lot more people showed up. My parents' sheer fury the day after the party still gives me the shivers today, 13 years on. The documentary's title is a reference to Project X, Nima Nourizadeh's hit 2012 comedy about a house party in suburban California that gets wildly out of control: supercars are driven into swimming pools, ecstasy is hidden in garden gnomes, floors cave in. The film was released just a month before my 16th birthday and instantly became a word-of-mouth phenomenon between my friends and I. We had already hungrily consumed chaotic teen dramas such as Skins and 90210, which focused on beautiful teenagers attending legendarily messy parties – complete with limitless drink and drugs – and held them up as the barometer of Cool. Unlike our boring, sober successors Gen Z, nothing was more important to my generation than partying – and the wilder, the better. My party came about after my parents left me alone for the weekend. I was armed with a few crates of Strongbow and Carling, bought from a dodgy corner shop by a slightly older friend whose tattoos meant he had no trouble getting served, and the (false) belief the adults would never find out; social media hadn't yet become so all-encompassing or instant. An iPod was set up to blast out cheesy music – Drake, Arctic Monkeys and Kid Cudi probably featured heavily – and, if my memory serves me, I was wearing a black sequin skirt paired with a 'statement' necklace. It's all so very, tragically millennial. The first hour or so of fun quickly gave way to disaster, however, when way more people showed up than I had expected. Every room was full, there were so many people climbing the apple tree in the garden that it began to subside, and one friend quickly became an ex-friend when they were caught doing stuff in my little brother's Bob the Builder-themed bed. In the kitchen, meanwhile, some sneaky sod had stuffed a potato with metal kitchen utensils and then popped it into the microwave. Who said British teenagers can't be inventive? View this post on Instagram A post shared by Merthe Marije Weusthuis (@mertheweusthuis) Partly due to my quest to have The Best Party Ever (and partly due to the cheap cider I'd spent all night guzzling through a beer bong), I don't remember feeling stressed until a friend ran in shouting that the springs of the outdoor trampoline had been pulled out. Then came a broken TV in the living room, reduced to a spluttering, fuzzy mess after someone poured washing up liquid into the air vents at the top. The nightmare scenarios kept coming: some boys I didn't know were heard saying they were going to 'raise' (slang for steal) at the party and raise they did – I woke up the day after to find I no longer owned an iPod, Nintendo DS or Wii. My sore head wasn't helped when I spotted my little sister's Wendy house in the corner of the garden, partly on fire and with its plastic windows kicked through. Even furious neighbours couldn't save me, because my parents' detached house didn't have any in the immediate vicinity; the only adult I remember marching up the drive was a weird stranger who offered to buy us more booze. Luckily, although my friends and I were stupid enough to publicly broadcast my address on Facebook, we weren't naive when it came to creeps, and he was swiftly ejected. When my parents arrived home, my feeble attempts to clean up were immediately sussed out and I was told to 'get out!' As an angsty 16-year-old girl desperate for some drama in her life, I took this literally and packed a bag to move into a friend's father's outhouse for a few days; ignoring all the calls my poor mum was making begging for me to come back. So, if you're looking to put the fear of god into your children to stop them ever throwing a wild party – damaging your lovely cream carpets and embarrassing you in front of Linda from next door in the process – then switch on Netflix and let the horror unfold. Or if, like me, you still cringe at the memory of how hopelessly silly you were at 16, watch it through your fingers while vowing to never hold a party again.
