Y2K review – as throw­away as a killer Tamagotchi

For­mer Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­ber Kyle Mooney took it upon him­self to lean into a feel­ing of kitsch nos­tal­gia which we, as view­ers, so des­per­ate­ly craved. With­in the first min­utes of his direc­to­r­i­al debut, Y2K, a mas­sive boxy AIO com­put­er fills the screen and buffers onto a glitchy video of a Bill Clin­ton speech. The cul­tur­al ref­er­ences don’t stop there: there’s fig­urines from That 70s Show, DVD stores, The Pam and Tom­my tape, a rain stick (remem­ber those?), and pre­mil­len­ni­al god­dess Ali­cia Sil­ver­stone tossed at the screen. 

Sto­ry wise, the film sees high school out­casts Eli (Jae­den Martell) and Dan­ny (Julian Den­ni­son) decid­ing to have a qui­et night in on New Year’s Eve 1999; they have no plans oth­er than to talk about hot girls in their grade, play video games and watch a movie. In a drunk­en haze, they end up crash­ing a par­ty host­ed by ​‘Soc­cer’ Chris, played by The Kid Laroi. While there, Eli attempts to hang out with his crush, It girl Lau­ra (Rachel Zegler), who is secret­ly a com­put­er cod­ing genius. 

Sud­den­ly, the pow­er cuts and all elec­tron­ic devices start to rum­ble, gear­ing up to kill and enslave human­i­ty. The Y2K bug apoc­a­lypse, it tran­spires, is real and quick­ly spreads, forc­ing our plucky par­ty­go­ers to seek shel­ter in the one place that doesn’t pose any threats: a ston­er hang-out with no elec­tron­ics oth­er than fairy lights. 

There’s a fun char­ac­ter dynam­ic in these ear­ly scenes, as the nos­tal­gia comes in from all sides, but things fall apart when the ensu­ing blood­bath arrives. At that point, the char­ac­ter devel­op­ment slow­ly comes to a close, and the bod­ies start to pile up in a very gener­ic hor­ror fash­ion, killing off cer­tain key play­ers that could have kept the film run­ning at the speed at which it began. 

What Y2K does nail, how­ev­er, is the ​’90s/​2000s aes­thet­ic cre­at­ed through pro­duc­tion design, although it lacks in the cos­tume depart­ment. Cos­tume design­er Kati­na Dan­abassis has worked on beau­ti­ful­ly styled films such as Lady Bird and Past Lives, acknowl­edg­ing that Y2K fash­ion has come back. Yet the cos­tumes here feel like 2000s-inspired designs plucked off the rack of mod­ern-day Urban Outfitters. 

The last half isn’t all bad. The char­ac­ter of Gar­ret, brought to life by Mooney him­self, embod­ies the epit­o­me of the drug-lov­ing slack­er, and a major cameo from an endur­ing ​’90s rap-rock act keeps the remain­ing min­utes inter­est­ing. Y2K is very bang on; the cul­tur­al ref­er­ences and tech para­noia are so overt­ly 2000s that it almost makes the film feel satir­i­cal. It’s not a bad movie, and it lives up to the stan­dards that it sets itself, but it is as throw­away as a killer Tamagotchi.