Y2K - Mark Reviews Movies

Y2K, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 6, 2024

The central joke of Y2K, which supposes an alternate history in which the eponymous tech glitch came to pass with disastrous results, is an inspired one. Technology has only become a more pervasive part of our lives, offering increasing reasons to be frightened of its potential. In co-writer/director Kyle Mooney's movie, it starts killing people in gruesome ways once the clock strikes a minute past midnight on the first day of the year 2000.

How does Mooney mess up this premise so resoundingly? One imagines he and co-writer Evan Winter came up with the conceit, realized how clever and funny it was, and assumed the rest of the material would simply flow from it. Instead, it's a bore, which almost seems to forget its gimmick for stretches, and a chore, because Mooney's directorial debut is so choppily assembled that its jokes are often ruined by the amateurish filmmaking on display.

The story begins as your usual coming-of-age tale, as best friends Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) prepare for a comfortable night in on New Year's Eve, since neither of them has any friends apart from each other. Eli does have a big crush on Laura (Rachel Zegler), who's a mix of popular teen and computer nerd that makes her both out of his league and perfect for the shy loner. That's how she exists here, at least, although, to be fair, every character in this story is little more than or barely achieves the simplicity of an archetype.

That's fine for the movie Mooney eventually suggests near the start, after a lengthy setup that portends the dullness of watching these characters do anything but outrun and be maimed by killer machines. They all just hang around, explain exactly the kind of personalities they and each other have, and make references to things going on in the late 1990s.

It's a period of dial-up modems, mix CDs, video stores, and, apparently, rock-rap musician Fred Durst, who shows up in the third act in de-aged form and pretty much is given the weight of the rest of the humor and plot. One wonders what Mooney would have done with the story if Durst turned down the offer, and if the climax of your movie depends entirely on nabbing an extended cameo, it's probably time to consider starting, if not from scratch, then at least from that point in the screenplay.

The best stuff here, after Eli and Danny decide to attend someone's house party in town, comes right after midnight. There's a power surge in the house, and suddenly, every electric device, toy, and appliance appears to gain homicidal sentience. That the gimmick makes no technological or logical sense is irrelevant to the conceit, because it's just supposed to be silly, bloody, and chaotic. Some of the deaths in the chaos include a motorized bed that sends someone flying into a ceiling fan and a dishwasher that intentionally trips a guy, sending his head through a microwave door.

More than that, pieces of technology combine themselves into monstrous entities, such an electric car with a computer monitor for a face, construction toys for arms, and enough intelligence to use hairspray and a lighter as a makeshift flamethrower. With that sequence out of the way, Mooney and Winter never recapture anything approaching its weird grotesquery. The party's survivors—who also include outcasts Ash (Lachlan Watson) and CJ (Daniel Zolghadri), whose major character distinction is their respective opinions on Durst's music, by the way—head out to find safety and, with Laura's tech know-how, stop the machines from killing or assimilating everyone.

Everything just stops dead in its tracks at this point, because the filmmakers put far too much confidence in our capacity to care for characters who have been written to be killed in a horror movie but have the good fortune of not dying. That's bad luck for us, as they mope about romantic misfortune, argue about popular music, and babble enough tech jargon to make us wonder if the screenwriters actually think their premise is legitimately plausible.

They certainly believe the characters are, giving them payoffs to non-existent emotional setups, while forgetting both the threat and the jokes. The latter oversight might be a blessing, especially since the rhythm of the gags is off, as Mooney milks scenes and loses momentum even in single shots.

When the technological monsters do show up, they're a neat combination of actors in oversized suits, puppetry, and stop-motion animation. Otherwise, Y2K is a one-joke movie that can't even sustain its singular source of humor.

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