Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Y2K’ on VOD, a Collection of Millennial References Passing for a Movie

By John Serba

Y2K (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is the movie equivalent of the sentence, “Hey, remember the Sneaker Pimps?” Ex-SNLer Kyle Mooney writes and directs this teen-comedy/kitsch-horror hybrid about his late-’90s nostalgia fetis- er, I mean, an assortment of high-schoolers fighting for survival on New Year’s Eve 1999, after the Y2K bug births murderous sentient monsterbots. In theory, you’ll feel this movie real hard if you ever threw away junk-mail AOL CD-ROMs on a weekly basis, or loved to hate Limp Bizkit, or waited two minutes for one blurry pixelated image of naked boobs to load on the internet. Ostensibly, there’s a story in this movie, if you can sift through the referential clutter to find it.

Y2K: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: SkreeeeeeechchchchccgongGONGgong goes the dial-up modem. Eli (Jaeden Martell) chats with two people on AOL Instant Messenger, Laura (Rachel Zegler), the girl he’s crushing on, and Danny (Julian Dennison), his bestie. Maybe he and the latter will find a way to get to the big NYE turn-of-the-millennium bash so he and the former can maybe kindle a little sumpin-sumpin. But it doesn’t seem feasible, so they just hit the video store (hey, remember video stores?) to rent a movie and then the convenience store for “a coupla cans of Surge” (hey, remember Surge?) for a boring night at home. But then Eli realizes Rachel broke up with her boyfriend, so they say F it and bust the lock on the parents’ liquor cabinet, get lubricated and head to the party, singing Chumbawamba (hey, remember Chumbawamba?) all the way. 

At the shindig, they eye various cliques identified by their taste in music: The swing-revival kids, the nu-metal kids, the hip-hop kids, the electronica kids (hey, remember all those music trends?), etc. Eli chats with Laura, who’s cute and smart, because she designed the school website, but her ex is milling about, and the puka-shell necklace he wears tells us he’s a bro who probably wept when Bradley Nowell died, and subsequently struggled to replace Sublime with Sugar Ray on his mix CDs (hey, remember mix CDs?). Then, the countdown occurs. The bro kisses Laura and Eli kisses nobody and then the power goes out. Now, hey, remember when everyone was worried that the Y2K bug would wreak havoc at the turn of midnight, 2000? Well, it didn’t happen, and the hype was a bust. Hey, remember that?

But it happens in this movie, although I doubt it woulda happened like this in real life: Household appliances and other gadgets and misc. period-specific electronic ephemera awaken to rebel against their oppressors. Violently, I might add. Sometimes, it’s as simple as a VCR firing a Varsity Blues VHS at someone’s head. Other times, kids are maimed or dismembered by deranged mutant killer monster tech goons – terrifying and apparently sentient conglomerations of dot matrix printers, 27-inch tube TVs and pagers, which have assembled themselves to kill all the humans. Eli, Laura and some survivors assemble in the garage (where the garage door openers are anachronistic newer-model Chamberlains; I notice these things) then bolt into the woods as planes fall out of the sky and their town burns. Now, Laura designed a website once, but can she figure out a way to hack the evil Y2K mainframe and put an end to this apocalypse? And will it take encountering Fred Durst to do it? I dunno, but this sure is just one’a those days.

Photo: A24

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Superbad is the reference point du jour of all teen comedies from the past five years. So take that and awkwardly weld it to an alt-universe version of Short Circuit where Johnny Five is actually the Terminator. (If you are in search for the “real” story of the Y2K panic, check out the 2024 HBO documentary Time Bug Y2K.)

Performance Worth Watching: Mooney plays a white guy with dreadlocks and Birkenstocks, and is the closest thing to a funny thing in this movie, which just isn’t particularly funny. So it goes.

Memorable Dialogue: Danny and Eli discuss Laura’s romantic availability:

Danny: Isn’t she sixty-nining that college guy?

Eli: Community college.

Danny: OK, so he can only get an associate’s degree in sixty-nining.

Sex and Skin: Glimpses of porn, partially clothed teens makin’ out.

Photo: A24

Our Take: Let’s start with what’s good about Y2K – and don’t worry, it won’t take long: The robot-monsters are amusingly horrific junkpiles of practical effects, brought to life via animatronics, some throwback-y stop-motion animation and the occasional Sam Raimi-ism. Otherwise, this movie spends more time wedging in rainstick gags, N64 references and Alicia Silverstone cameos (she plays Eli’s mom) to tell a coherent story, develop a character or even deliver a decent joke. 

The screenplay is flimsy and sloppy, Mooney seemingly slapping together a tryhard look-ma wannabe cult comedy of the type that was ignored in theaters only to be revived via video-rental and cable reruns, two methods allowing viewers to be drunk or stoned in the comfort of their own homes, and therefore vulnerable to laughing at things that don’t really deserve it. Mooney doesn’t bother to commit to anything, a tone (is it OTT or satire?), a cast member’s specific talents (Martell is an earnest type in the Nicolas Hoult or Daniel Radcliffe vein) or a decent running gag (regular Limp Bizkit references ain’t that). It practically disintegrates on the screen while we watch it. 

Once all hell breaks loose, the characters make their way through a half-shrug of a plot that barely sustains a 90-minute run time and doesn’t seem interested in leaning into gory displays of violence, elements of raunchy teen sex comedies or any of that fun stuff. I mean, why do anything memorable when you can stand around remembering Tamagotchis or whatever? Y2K could’ve been all about, say, Eli’s quest to lose his virginity with Laura before the world ends, and we might be endeared to it. But that’s an actual idea, and this movie doesn’t really have any of those. 

Our Call: You can stick Y2K up your YEAH. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.