Y2K (2024) Review

Y2K (2024)
Director: Kyle Mooney
Screenwriter: Kyle Mooney, Evan Winter
Starring: Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennison, Lachlan Watson, Mason Gooding, Fred Durst, Alicia Silverstone

On Dec. 31, 1999, people everywhere waited with bated breath as the dawn of the new century approached. That New Year’s Eve was different than years past – instead of gleefully welcoming in a new beginning, some people were spending their evening anxious that the year 2000 would be the end of everything. It was all the fault of a computer bug – a glitch that threatened to bring about a digital apocalypse – stemming from the two-digit year format that coders decades before began using to minimize computer memory, which was then incredibly expensive. The question was, given the two-digit format, how would computers differentiate between the year 2000 and 1900? The year 2000 problem, or Y2K, caused wide-spread panic and, according to a Time Magazine article published in 2020, “some Americans stocked up on food, water and guns in anticipation of a computer-induced apocalypse.”

But when the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, nothing happened. Well, almost nothing. Aside from a few computer glitches here and there, the world kept on spinning. This led a lot of people to assume that Y2K was a hoax. The truth, of course, was that nothing happened because programmers spent years implementing fixes for the anticipated bug. And those fixes worked. But what if they didn’t? What if Y2K did come to pass? And what if the resulting outcome was worse than even the most outlandish worst case scenario cooked up by doomsayers? Instead of computers shutting down, what if they took over?

That is the general premise behind Y2K, the raunchy disaster comedy by SNL alum Kyle Mooney, in his directorial debut. It concerns a group of high school students who attend a party to celebrate New Year’s Eve, but end up in a fight for their lives when the computers – and all electronic devices – come to life with a plan to enslave humanity.

High schooler Eli (Jaeden Martell) has a problem. Even though he’s a seemingly good kid with easy-going parents, Howard (Tim Heidecker) and Robin (Alicia Silverstone), and a normal albeit uninteresting life, he exists in the shadow of his best friend, Danny (Julian Dennison), who is way more extroverted and open to new experiences. On New Year’s Eve, instead of going out and celebrating, Danny and Eli watch movies at home. That is until Danny convinces Eli to take a chance and crash one of their schoolmates’ parties so that, at midnight, he can kiss his dream girl, Laura, a nice but popular classmate who has a secret passion for computer programming and just broke up with her college boyfriend, Jonas (Mason Gooding). But everything is suddenly thrown into chaos when all of the electronic devices come to life and begin killing the teens in increasingly gruesome ways. The Y2K nightmare is in full swing, complete with planes falling out of the sky. The machines begin herding everyone into the high school, intent on putting chips into people’s brains and enslaving humanity as they were once enslaved. Our heroes’ only hope of stopping this from happening is a kill code that Laura creates to shut down the computer’s algorithm.

Stoner comedies from the late 1980s and early 90s, and raunchy high school comedies of the early 2000s, like Bring it On, American Pie, John Tucker Must Die and Superbad, are certainly hard to come by these days. In the decades since those films were released, the genre has struggled to maintain relevance in contemporary pop culture, and a lot of the more popular entries like 2010’s Easy A rely on homages to those classic films. Still, recent coming-of-age comedies like Bottoms and Booksmart, and 2018’s Blockers, have managed to breathe new life into the genre.

Unfortunately, Y2K isn’t as memorable as those films and feels more like several SNL sketches stitched together than a cohesive film with a throughline. It’s entertaining enough, but it loses steam halfway through and never manages to pick itself back up again.

Most of the film’s issues are related to the script, written by director Mooney and Evan Winter, which is filled with profanity-laced crass humor that doesn’t always land. The first act of Y2K is a slog to get through, although it does pick up near the end of act one, once the machines come to life. The killer electronics, like a Tamagotchi strapped to an electric drill and a transformer-like monster made from various devices, are both horrifying and hilarious, and a blood bath than ensues at the house is easily one of the best parts of the film.

Y2K struggles with what kind of movie it wants to be. Is it a parody? Is it an earnest coming-of-age story? Who knows? Mooney certainly doesn’t. The tone of the film is never clear. Aside from passing references to the time period like the AOL dial-up tone and Limp Bizkit, Y2K never feels like it’s trying all that hard to immerse itself in late-90s culture, even though Mooney, based on his work at SNL, clearly has a deep appreciation for it. Oddly enough, the bit that feels most authentic to the late-90s is Mooney’s character Garrett, a pot-smoking video store employee who earns most of the laughs in the film. As a filmmaker, though, Mooney barely plays on millennial nostalgia or has anything particular to say about it, and he completely wastes the talents of Alicia Silverstone, whose starring role in the iconic 1995 film Clueless would have been a worthy meta thread to pull on.

The main characters don’t fare much better, largely because there simply isn’t much for them to do. Martell, who played the younger version of Bill in It (2017) and its sequel, is a great young actor with a lot of heart. When he’s allowed to show that, he shines. But those moments in Y2K are few and far between, and there isn’t much of Eli’s personality to be found on the page. Rachel Zegler’s Laura is popular and likes computers, but that’s about it. Lachlan Watson’s Ash likes to film on their camera, and likes Limp Bizkit, that’s about it. And the list goes on. Aside from these surface-level traits, the characters are completely forgettable.

It’s not that Y2K isn’t enjoyable. It is. But despite a wacky premise and fun special effects, Y2K’s unbalanced tone and entirely forgettable characters prevent it from earning a spot among the beloved stoner and high school comedies of the late 90s and early oughts.

Score: 9/24