Y2K (2024)
Directed by: Kyle Mooney
Premise: On New Year’s Eve 1999, a group of teens gather at a party. Electronic devices come alive and attack people.
What Works: Y2K revisits the millennial fear that computers and internet-connected devices would stop working after 11:59pm on December 31, 1999. In reality nothing happened but Y2K imagines machines turning against humanity in Chopping Mall fashion. Y2K is interesting in the way it borrows elements from popular films of 1999. Y2K is fundamentally a one-crazy-night-in-high-school story and it recreates the late 1990s teen movie aesthetic seen in She’s All That, Jawbreaker, American Pie, and Varsity Blues. There were also a lot of cyber-thriller movies released in the 1990s such as Hackers, The Net, and The Lawnmower Man and those movies also inform the style of Y2K.
What Doesn’t: The filmmakers reference the styles of late 1990s movies they don’t do very much with them. Like a lot of teen movies from that time, the story is set at a high school party where low social caste friends try to meet women; Y2K does not do this kind of story well. Friends Eli and Danny (Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison) are pathetic and obnoxious and their quest for sex and social validation is not interesting. They have a predictable falling out and reconciliation but none of it is affecting. One-crazy-night movies are coming of age stories but there’s no growth or epiphany here; it’s just an empty retread of teen movie tropes. Eli has a crush on classmate Laura (Rachel Zegler) but they have no romantic spark. Halfway through, Y2K becomes a killer robot movie and this is also done poorly. The concept doesn’t make internal sense. A singular digital consciousness spread through the worldwide web attacks on humanity through assorted home appliances; these devices did not connect to the internet in 1999. Maybe that’s a more detailed critique than Y2K calls for, but the logical lapses stick out because the movie is so boring. There is little sense of urgency or jeopardy. The characters don’t behave like they are facing the apocalypse; after witnessing their friends killed by robots, the survivors trapse through the woods arguing about high school gossip and singing “Tubthumping” by Chumbawumba. This sounds a lot funnier than it is, which is not at all.
Bottom Line: The filmmakers of Y2K aim for a mix of horror and comedy but they create neither. The picture is a disastrous cacophony of tones and an unimaginative retread of teen and horror movie clichés.
Episode: #1027 (December 15, 2024)