Directed by Kyle Mooney
Hey! Have you spent 25 years wondering what life might have been like if Y2K had really happened? Well, wonder no more…
Enter Y2K, Kyle Mooney‘s slasher disaster comedy film about the once-threatened total collapse of modern society via sentient microwaves and Tamagotchis.
THE PLOT
The setup is simple: it’s New Year’s Eve, 1999, and Eli (Jaeden Martell) just wants to kiss his crush Laura (Rachel Zegler with butterfly clips) before midnight. Instead, he ends up watching his classmates slaughtered by glitched-out household electronics. After the clock strikes twelve, a VHS tape is launches like a ninja star into someone’s skull, a Tamagotchi-manned RCV runs a screwdriver through a girl’s head, someone is waterbed-launched into a ceiling fan. It’s gory — the first 40 minutes are not for the easily disturbed.
Before the bloodshed, Eli’s best friend, self-proclaimed Kiwi Danny (Julian Dennison), has the party on his side, a 1999-played-in-2024 version of Jonah Hill’s Seth from Superbad (2007) performing a comedic but earnest rendition of Sisqó’s “Thong Song” and ultimately earning an NYE kiss from a pretty girl. Moments later the chaos ensues.
After the initial party-goer slashings, a core group escapes to the garage — Eli, Danny, and Laura are joined by Farkas (Eduardo Franco), a loudmouthed bully who has given Eli & Danny hell for years, and his buddies, poet rapper CJ (Daniel Zolghadri) and wannabe videographer Ash (Lachlan Watson).
Danny never makes it out of the garage — stabbed from behind by a sentient machine monster’s blade. The second the rest of the group leave the house, Farkas attempts to skate on a fallen basketball hoop post, smacks his head on the ground, and dies. Now, there is some comedic gold buried in the fact that Farkas goes without help from the killer robots, but the deaths of Danny & Farkas were huge losses for the movie, creating a humor vacuum the movie never sucks itself out of. Once they’re gone, we’re stuck with the remaining four and a rotating cast of semi-likable survivors that pop in and out — none of them quite filling Dennison or Franco’s space.
Mooney himself shows up as a new-tech-averse video store clerk celebrating the holiday with his stoner crew, “The Kollective,” at an abandoned factory. The kids are safe there for a while, but ultimately decide to dive headfirst into danger and attempt to save the world. Honestly, I was glad to be rid of Mooney’s Garrett and his “yeah, man” pothead persona for a while.
They learn the details of the digital consciousness algorithm, called “The Amalgamation,” and Laura figures out a kill code. The machines are assembling the remaining humans — including Eli’s parents, Tim Heidecker and an uninspired Alicia Silverstone — at the high school, uploading them into a digital reality via newly installed brain chips.
THE ENDING & MESSAGE
The metaphor here — “The emails? The cell phones? You were already our slaves.” (literal quote) — is delivered with no subtlety whatsoever. But Eli, Laura, and the team win, defeating the robot empire with coding skills and their humanity, although they lose CJ in the process. Human friendship defeats the downward pull of technology, “Never trust a computer you can’t throw out the window,” and so on.
Still, Y2K has its charms. Yes, that is the Kid LAROI playing “Soccer Chris.” The carnage is inventive. The good-vibes nostalgia for 90s-2000s tunes & toys is present throughout. And by the time Fred Durst shows up to save the world, you’ve either bought into the bit or mentally checked out.
FINAL THOUGHTS
It’s not as silly as Scary Movie (2000) and not as scary as a real horror — too gruesome to be lightweight but too dumb to be taken seriously. Y2K lives in that strange little space between cult classic gem and failed experiment.
Depending on your mood, it could be a great time. And the whole thing might be worth it for the post-credits music video from New Zealand’s national treasure Julian Dennison.
this movie is good (when you’re in the right mood for it).
My rating: 3/5
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