Homicidal Tamagotchi Hunt for Human Blood in Bogus ‘Y2K’
It’s hard to believe the Y2K scare was a quarter of a century ago. And yet, here we are, decades later, totally unaffected and unharmed by the far reaches of technology! (Kidding—AI needs to go.) But what if it had been a real and dangerous threat, and humans faced apocalypse as soon as the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2000? They’d throw on a George Michael track and pray for the nerdiest hacker to come through and save the day, that’s what.
With the ’90s wit of Freaks and Geeks and the gallows humor of Shaun of the Dead, Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut Y2K nearly has what it takes to be the next great teen horror comedy. The film’s dawn of the new millennium references—from AOL dial-up crackles to the “Macarena” dance—are absolutely riotous. But a lack of intriguing characters and failure to follow through on a great concept for a horror story leave Y2K, which premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival, with major software bugs.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and besties/total losers Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison) have no solid plans to ring in the millennium. Danny’s best idea: “sit around and talk about who you wanna fuck from school,” he pitches over AIM. While Eli giggles over raunchy messages from Danny, he also IMs roxygirl (a shopgirl knockoff), a.k.a Laura (Rachel Zegler), the most popular girl at school. Eli, who is super anxious and too unsure of himself to ever get a word out, has befriended Laura in AP Computer Science. She’s a tech whiz. Eli is constantly stunned by her presence.