It’s hard to believe the Y2K scare was a quarter of a century ago. And yet, here we are, decades later, totally unaffected and unharmed by the far reaches of technology! (Kidding—AI needs to go.) But what if it had been a real and dangerous threat, and humans faced apocalypse as soon as the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000? They’d throw on a George Michael track and pray for the nerdiest hacker to come through and save the day, that’s what.
With the ’90s wit of Freaks and Geeks and the gallows humor of Shaun of the Dead, Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut Y2K nearly has what it takes to be the next great teen horror comedy. The film’s dawn of the new millennium references—from AOL dial-up crackles to the “Macarena” dance—are absolutely riotous. But a lack of intriguing characters and failure to follow through on a great concept for a horror story leave Y2K, which premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, with major software bugs.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and besties/total losers Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) have no solid plans to ring in the millennium. Danny’s best idea: “sit around and talk about who you wanna fuck from school,” he pitches over AIM. While Eli giggles over raunchy messages from Danny, he also IMs roxygirl (a shopgirl knockoff), a.k.a Laura (Rachel Zegler), the most popular girl at school. Eli, who is super anxious and too unsure of himself to ever get a word out, has befriended Laura in AP Computer Science. She’s a tech whiz. Eli is constantly stunned by her presence.
Danny, who is always around the corner with a free condom in hand, is persistent in his attempts to break Eli out of his shell. Danny sees how hard Eli pines for Laura—who, somewhat coincidentally, just broke up with her college-aged boyfriend Jonas (Mason Gooding)—and insists he ought to ask her out for good. But when you imagine “I’ll Be” by Edwin McCain soundtracking every moment you see someone, it’s over; they’re no longer a real person. They’re a highly unattainable dream crush, and no amount of pushing from friends will fix that perception.
Danny trudges onward, dragging Eli to the big booze party thrown by the soccer guys, where the pair plot to throw on their totally sweet, newly burnt “bada$$” CD mix and kill it on the dancefloor. As soon as Danny throws on his anthem—“The Thong Song” by Sisqó, putting Matthew Morrison’s Glee performance to shame—and gyrates his hips, Eli fades out of the picture. While Danny has what it takes to be the center of attention, Eli is perfectly fine being a perpetual wallflower.
This becomes a bigger problem when Y2K starts to kill characters off, and Eli—who is as boring as a long car ride without a Discman and a pair of headphones—is one of the only ones left alive. The kills start out fun: Every piece of technology at the party comes alive and, in the goriest ways possible, starts to murder the high schoolers. A mechanical bed snaps a teenager in half. A vicious Tamagotchi latches itself onto a roller car and stabs a girl over and over again until her neon joggers are dark red. Some of the biggest characters meet their cruel, hilarious demises, giving Y2K a promising, bonkers start.
But Y2K kills off all the wrong people. Although Martell and Zegler make for a cute little duo, Eli and Laura are underbaked and, in the end, total duds. They’re joined by a flurry of stoners who repeat the same joke again and again until the bit is as dirty and overused as month old bong water. We get it: A bunch of losers smoking weed and popping a few MDMA tablets makes for some gonzo sequences. If Y2K used this gag sparingly, it would work. But Mooney’s role—Garrett, a washed-out stoner who runs the local video store—makes all of the bummy fools less and less humorous with each “Whoa, dude.” Frequent use of potty humor does not help the movie, either.
If the horror was as promising as that gonzo opening set of kills, Y2K would have every reason to be as much of a smash hit as Bodies Bodies Bodies. The lack of character wouldn’t matter because retro tech murdering midi-skirt clad teens would make the movie watchable in its own right. Not long after the tech becomes sentient and homicidal, however, the machine design becomes less clever and more Transformers-esque. Wires and cords shape into bodies with computers for heads. Those computers are killing people or, worse, reprogramming the human mind to become a part of “The Singularity,” an apocalyptic group that wants to use idiotic humans to take over the world.
Even a visit from Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst (and a few quick cameos from bandmate Wes Borland) can’t liven up Y2K in its final act. The late-’90s shtick may be exciting at first—Video stores! Alicia Silverstone as Eli’s mom! Tipper Gore!—but can only last so long. Y2K isn’t downright terrible. But Mooney’s idea is so dope that it’s sad to see the film not live up to its full potential. Plus, who wants to live in a world where Limp Bizkit never had a track on Mission: Impossible 2?
