Review: Y2K

Director:  Kyle Mooney

Stars:  Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennison, Jaeden Martell

The stars aren’t in alignment for Rachel Zegler at the moment. Through no fault of her own, she now has two critically derided movies landing in the UK at the exact same time; Disney’s controversy-ridden Snow White rehash and SNL alum Kyle Mooney’s thoroughly underwhelming A24 offering. Neither film falls down because of Zegler, but one might well imagine she’ll be avoiding social media this weekend.

Y2K sees Mooney launching himself as a filmmaker with a nostalgia-encrusted jaunt back to New Year’s Eve 1999. Taking place in the generic suburb of Crawford, we’re introduced to moody teenage incel Eli (Jaeden Martell), who pines for popular girl Laura (Zegler) whom he messages online but can’t imagine speaking to face-to-face. Eli’s sole friend is Kiwi loudmouth Danny (Julian Dennison). Dennison’s saddled here with a brash wing-man role as the two outcasts head to a house party to see in the year 2000 and maybe get laid with an old, dusty condom that they carry everywhere (Y2K sure is keen to resurrect the comedic nadirs of the era it’s devoted to). When the clock strikes midnight, a series of nonsensical accidents take place, all involving electrical appliances and, err, robots that have instantaneously built themselves(?). With the party well and truly crashed, Eli and a ragtag bunch of misfit survivors stumble out into a world of technophobia and poorly orchestrated havoc.

Other than stringing together a number of painfully labored references to turn-of-the-millennium culture (AOL! N64s! Enron!) it’s difficult to discern what exactly Y2K wants to be. With it’s chunky robots and their meathead humour, it occasionally achieves the vibe of a more-obnoxious V/H/S short, but you can’t quite pigeonhole it as a horror movie because it’s so indifferent about the idea. The first half hour amounts to a wannabe-carefree Dazed & Confused style hangout movie, but it’s strangely airy and flatly staged, with “waits for laugh” gaps that aren’t readily filled because the material’s so thin. Once the ham-fisted and localised(?) apocalypse starts happening, gears shift only moderately. It becomes an amble across leafy terrain until Y2K is abruptly overtaken by… Fred Durst… as Fred Durst.

Now, Durst appeared in a groundbreaking, soulful, horror-adjacent gem for A24 in 2024. But it wasn’t Y2K. One longs for his less-is-more crepuscular cameo from I Saw The TV Glow in the wake of Mooney’s overtly awkward hagiography. Never mind that he’s 25 years older than he’s supposed to be; attention to detail is non-existent here, as the underdeveloped plot and basic editing and staging so frequently remind us (there’s a whole further issue with that fucking condom, but it’d turn this piece into an outright rant, so I’ll skip it). The story isn’t the point, evidently. Thematic undercurrents of Americans rejecting materialism and the rise of AI are wishy-washy. Y2K gamely asks the question… what if an artificial intelligence achieved the personality of Stifler from American Pie – that’s how fucked this apocalypse is. Ultimately, Y2K is about Scary Movie-level middling humour that putters out well before Zegler and co. get to pull the plug.

As intimated at the top, Zegler’s not the downfall of this movie. She plays what little she’s given just fine. But what is she given? Characterisation is another area in which Y2K struggles. Martell’s Eli is so self-pitying that 90 minutes in his company is a hard ask. Too bad he’s Mooney’s uninspired alter-ego here. The director does appear quite substantially elsewhere, however, playing stoner video store clerk Garret. He even gives himself the ol’ hero-shot before succumbing to one of the movie’s many questionable takes on the laws of physics. Mooney appears to be under the impression that the human body is even more fragile than his narrative. Someone buys it hitting their head on the ground. Someone else buys it from getting a CD thrown at them. I assume this is meant to be funny, but it scans – like so much of Y2K – as just bafflingly lazy writing.

So spare a thought for Lachlan Watson’s proto-lesbian and Durst worshipper Ash, the only character in the movie worth a damn yet, like all Mooney’s supporting players, saddled with not that much to do. Watson impressed greatly on Don Mancini’s Chucky series for Syfy, and there’s a fleeting hope that they might be afforded the opportunity to shine here, too. You can see the potential, but the focus is elsewhere, and all wrong. Perhaps a more telling presence is Tim Heidecker as Eli’s dopey father. His appearance suggests an ideology of deliberate naffness. Too bad that the rest of the movie isn’t so confident with it.

Not scary, not that funny and not incisive about anything, Y2K genuinely lacks for purpose, other than to barrage us with remnants of the pop culture of a quarter century ago. It’s enough to embarrass even fans of Stranger Things. One comes away with the distinct impression that it would have been far cheaper – and more merciful for all parties – if Mooney had simply made himself a Spotify playlist.