Y2K

Rarely does A24 produce the raucous and offensive comedy film that Kyle Mooney’s disaster piece Y2K objectively is, but the former Saturday Night Live writer and performer’s directorial debut is just the kind of divisive indie effort the popular film studio gravitates toward. Unlike the more mellow and emotional Mid90s—another A24 project that transported audiences back to the decade of skater culture, pop punk, and cable TV—Y2K invokes the raunchy humor of early-millennium comedy and an array of nostalgic references, resulting in a wild adventure that will likely only appeal to a specific viewer base.

Mooney’s debut envisions an alternate reality of New Year’s Eve, 1999, where the paranoid threat of a computer-based apocalypse does occur. The so-called “millennium bug” spawns sentient machines that seek to kill and enslave human beings. Our heroes include Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison), two social losers who crash a high school classmate’s Y2K party to gain favor with the cool kids and for Eli to hook up with the love of his life, the popular Laura (Rachel Zegler). At the stroke of midnight, the robot apocalypse begins, and the different castes of kids must join forces to survive.

Courtesy of A24

This premise is just the sort of goofy plot concept the satire films and stoner comedies of the ’90s and 2000s loved to build jokes on, and Mooney, along with co-writer Evan Winter, accomplishes that to great effectiveness here. With just the film’s opening scene reflecting a computer desktop in which Eli shares perverse messages back and forth with Danny on AOL Instant Messenger, Y2K resembles the spirited, profane comedies of Judd Apatow and the Wayans Brothers, among others.

Subsequent scenes seek to develop our primary and secondary characters by whisking us back to 1999, establishing the statuses of various characters (there are, of course, the losers, the popular kids, the alt punks who bully Eli and Danny, the jocks, etc.) while showcasing the era’s unique vernacular and pop culture references including Bill Clinton’s Y2K speech, That ’70s Show, and VHS rental stores. Mooney does well not to construct these nostalgic moments in a particularly pointed way, instead utilizing the era’s humor to carry the scenes forward.

Courtesy of A24

When the plot turns on its head, Y2K resembles something of a Superbad/Shaun of the Dead hybrid, forcing the survivors into a dangerous adventure chockful of lumbering machine murderers at nearly every conceivable turn. It is an entertaining if not especially intricate story, but that is arguably all the movie needs to be. However, given the emphasis on period-specific humor and the way it underscores nearly every aspect of the film, Y2K falters in its more tender moments.

Mooney and Winter craft some unpopular plot choices early in the film’s script and then in the climax, but that is only part of the issue. These often dramatic moments typically get sandwiched between ridiculous events rather abruptly, disrupting the film’s otherwise exciting flow. Martell, Zegler, and the remainder of the cast do well to act out the turmoil their characters face in these instances, but structurally, it is difficult to justify some of these strange choices.

Courtesy of A24

Otherwise, Y2K is a delightful window in time to a far different era of humor and filmmaking in general, but it will not be for everybody. On the whole, the practical effects are quite impressive, and Mooney’s character Garrett is the comedic highlight. Otherwise, elements like the intentionally awful CGI and editing (referencing specific media of that timeframe), and much of the humor itself, will probably only make a lick of sense to viewers who lived through the ’90s and 2000s. Interested parties who are younger than the age of 20 and those with a more conservative sense of humor should be aware: Y2K is exactly the kind of film you think it might be.

Y2K is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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