'Y2K' Review: The Millennials Vs the Machines | SXSW 2024
In 2024, Kyle Mooney caught the Y2K bug. Not only does his directorial debut Y2K see early millennials and X-ers' greatest late-‘90s fear of the apocalypse the moment the clock hit midnight on 1/1/00 (it couldn't be me because I was a baby), but it’s also a sincere love letter to ‘90s teen flicks if they had to go up against Skynet.
Caption Credit: Nicole Rivelli | Courtesy of A24
R: Bloody violence, strong sexual content/nudity, pervasive language, and teen drug and alcohol use.
Runtime: 1 Hr and 33 Minutes
Production Companies: A24, Strong Baby Productions, American Light & Fixture
Distributor: A24
Director: Kyle Mooney
Writer: Kyle Mooney, Evan Winter
Cast: Rachel Zegler, Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, Lachlan Watson, Daniel Zolghadri, Mason Gooding, The Kid Laroi
Release Date: December 6, 2024
Exclusively In Theaters
On New Year's Eve 1999, in a suburban neighborhood, two best friends – high school junior outsiders Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) – decide to crash a New Year's Eve party with all of their peers. Danny's goal is to find a romantic partner for the night, while Eli hopes to get closer to his high school crush, popular girl Laura (Rachel Zegler), who has a secret hacker side to her. However, their plans fall apart when midnight strikes, and the Y2K bug triggers a robot apocalypse. Digital objects, previously harmless, come to life with a plan to enslave and eradicate all of humanity. Now, it's up to Eli, Laura, Danny, white boy rapper wannabe CJ (Daniel Zolghadri), and angsty rebel cameraperson Ash (Lachlan Watson) to survive the night and defeat the Digi-lords.
Millennial filmmakers are now making their ‘90s-set flicks through rose-colored lenses, and Kyle Mooney executes his near-new-millennium backdrop tastefully. The lifestyle is displayed as people do the Macarena, karaoke to “Thong Song,” and insult others by shaping an L on their forehead. The opening images feature Eli burning music onto a blank CD-R while messaging his crush Laura and BFF Danny in separate AOL dial-up chat boxes. It's very touch-and-go in referencing the relevant aspects of the period as it – like many teen movies released during that era – lets the characters steer the story rather than the setting.
Amid the outrageous machine murders across the board, Mooney and Evan Winter’s script bears charm that repeatedly triumphs over the dwindling steam of its ideas. It plays alongside the American Pie and Can't Hardly Wait era of coming-of-age teen comedies where the loser outcast and the filterless best friend try to land the girl of their dreams, except it’s under the guise of the apocalypse. That sentiment extends to its cast as Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison's dynamic onscreen chemistry carries much of the pacing and laughs, transmitting hints of early Simon Pegg/Nick Frost through their familiar character archetypes.
As popular girl Laura, who harbors a hacker girl secret, ala Angelina Jolie in Hackers, the always great Rachel Zegler finally gets to bust her comedic chops. Laura isn’t very intriguing, especially when her romance with Eli is pushed to the forefront, but Zegler’s charisma carries her character. Where Eli and Laura's romantic beats fall flat, side characters CJ and Ash ascend for their traits, and the performers’ comic sensibilities refresh the story. The writers treat them as more than joke characters, having this loner white rapper wannabe and the Hot Topic skater with a sexuality crisis share a sincere bond, faring as more intriguing characters than the leads.
The single-set section of the film (until the characters trek out of the party) is at its peak, dishing gnarly, graphic, and hilarious kills, like The Mitchells vs. the Machines with guts and gore. Its impressive practical effects on all the robotic adversaries add immersion to the kills, making each death more disturbing than the last while evoking some darkly comedic moments. It's not unlike what you'd see in Mooney and Dave McCary's old SNL skits that incorporated stop-motion and practical effects techniques to the kills.
Regarding its structure and scope, Y2K is so easily comparable to Shaun of the Dead, for it spends a lot of time in one interior until its characters go to a safe house to save the world. Whereas Shaun retains its energy, cleverness, and hilarity when the characters leave their residence, Y2K's ideas flail when it decides to kill off essential players. When one person bites the bullet by the midpoint, it ruins the film's potential for better humor, narrative focus, and swift pacing. By that point, the story goes through the conventional motions of a survival comedy down to an anticlimactic finale, in need of a distinct quality that other Shaun-like films, such as the musical Anna and the Apocalypse, were able to achieve. No, Fred Durst's cameo does not count as pizazz.
Though it moves on autopilot in its premise and plotting, Kyle Mooney's Y2K is a fun ‘90s love letter as sincere as it is gory.
Rating: 3/5 | 63%
