Y2K Review – IGN
A24 will launch Y2K in theaters at a date TBD. This overview relies on a screening on the 2024 SXSW Movie Pageant.
Properly, it occurred: I lastly noticed my uniquely American childhood vividly and embarrassingly depicted on display screen. Kyle Mooney’s Y2K transports us again to December 31, 1999, when playlists have been burned onto CD-Rs and pornographic pictures downloaded just a few pixels per minute. Millennials keep in mind how Y2K paranoia ended up being for naught, however Mooney imagines a world the place rogue cyber consciousness certainly grew to become a doomsday drawback. Co-written by Evan Winter, this goofy A24 catastrophe comedy rages towards machines, turning late-’90s nostalgia into big laughs that not often let up.
The movie begins like a teen intercourse comedy about two suburban social outcasts, Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison). Neither appears content material with their Nintendo 64-centric New 12 months’s plans, so Eli musters the braveness to sip some crappy vodka and attend a classmate’s social gathering. That’s the place his computer-hacker crush Laura (Rachel Zegler) might be, together with the potential of a midnight kiss. Because the clock strikes 12, teenagers stop chugging from Solo cups to rejoice the brand new decade – after which it occurs. This isn’t the widespread pc shutdown that Y2K-bug true believers warned of. As an alternative, electrical home equipment and on-line gadgets begin slaughtering houseguests, prompting Eli and his crew to hunt security away from the sentient Battlebots.
Mooney’s tenure at Saturday Evening Dwell lays the groundwork for Y2K’s emphasis on amusement. It’s hardly scary; given its lighthearted tone, the closest horror-comedy comparability level could also be This Is the Finish. Wētā Workshop offers the film some spectacular monsters product of wires and screens, however Tamagotchis drilling holes in rave youngsters’ heads are hardly the consequences home’s most fiendish creations. The scariest notion right here is that 24 years have handed since “Thong Music” dominated the charts, and Y2K offers Mooney area to affectionately roast the millennium’s flip with a deluge of generational earworms. Not like classic AOL Immediate Messenger sounds and rap-rock anthems, that gag by no means grows previous. It’s no “Solely ’90s youngsters will keep in mind” gimmick: The pc desktops and dialogue impressed by the poetic lyrics of Fred “Break Stuff” Durst are wealthy in authenticity. We would have forgotten how bizarre and alien this period really was, however Mooney hasn’t.
A pleasant solid headlined by Martell and Zegler rolls with the punches (and beheadings) and has a agency deal with on the movie’s silly-sincere intentions. Y2K is a humorous catastrophe flick, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a catastrophe flick, and the youthful solid manages to steadiness X-Video games one-liners and life-or-death stakes as their internet-bred foes develop bigger and extra lethal – like a Katamari military absorbing increasingly tech. The reliably pleasant Dennison shines as a assured, class-clown kind, whereas Martell performs awkward and geeky to Zegler’s endlessly charming cool woman. These three are the movie’s grounding drive, which lets supporting gamers like Eduardo Franco (taking part in a skater-punk-in-a-Instrument T-shirt) or Lachlan Watson (as a Limp Bizkit megafan) ham it up. Mooney’s portrayal of a dreadlocked stoner video retailer clerk is correct out of considered one of his YouTube movies, consultant of the comic’s chill-vibes strategy all through the movie.
Previous Mooney tasks just like the Sundance hit Brigsby Bear and Netflix’s Saturday Morning All Star Hits! recreate bygone pop-culture eras with seemingly effortlessness, and Y2K maintains that immersive sensation. An ensemble that includes Mason Gooding, Alicia Silverstone, and Tim Heidecker hits their end-of-the-Twentieth-century stereotypes with out feeling plastic or inorganic. Mooney and Winter lean into the absurdity of the interval’s best tecno-anxieties with the identical stage of vividness Wētā brings to the strolling, murdering gizmos revolting towards serving humanity’s worst on-line impulses. Riffs on tacky style clichés like “intense” hacker montages or The Matrix-style boss battles are fodder for Mooney’s goofball strategy. Nevertheless, they nonetheless really feel fittingly of the time (and are shot by none apart from Matrix cinematographer Invoice Pope) – the identical goes for the movie’s excellent cameo pull. Y2K is a time-capsule crowd-pleaser first and a digital-singularity-uprising second. Keep in mind that whenever you’re howling at long-game condom jokes as a substitute of marveling on the intricate particulars behind the autumn of civilization.
