The limitless barrage of horror movies in 2024 isn’t ending in December. Debut director Kyle Mooney, most identified for his work on SNL and Brigsby Bear, was lastly handed the reigns to direct. Y2K is ready at a New 12 months’s eve occasion in the course of the titular occasion the place the movie posits that the Y2K phenomena (which was half fable and half reality) ends in machines coming to life and beginning to brutally homicide folks. The limitless barrage of cultural references solely compound the mediocre writing and enhancing, making for a by-product and uninteresting movie.
Mooney is intent on letting the viewer know the movie takes place in 1999. Between the soundtrack, cultural references, and stunt castings, Y2K can’t say it didn’t ship on its promise of interval comedy. Nicely, maybe it doesn’t ship on the comedy, because it substitutes interval motifs for jokes various instances. In actual fact, an early scene options Mooney chopping between a number of social teams at a celebration, showcasing each stereotypical social group from the late 90s simply so the viewer has no misunderstanding concerning the period through which the movie takes place. Characters all through the movie will randomly sing “Tubthumbing” or rap at one another horribly. Small doses of this may work, however the almost steady assault of it grates shortly.
It additionally doesn’t assist that Y2K is a really edited movie. It barely makes an effort to arrange a narrative, with Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison starring because the stereotypical social wallflowers determined to have a New 12 months’s Eve kiss earlier than catastrophe strikes. The remaining hour of the movie is a sequence of random scenes stacked on one another with little sense of plot development or which means. The movie’s lack of ability to arrange stakes or spacial continuity, and its awkwardly-timed comedy scenes end in a clunker of a movie with little to take pleasure in or root for.
There are some admittedly amusing moments right here and there. The cameo casting of Alicia Silverstone and Tim Heidecker is amusing for his or her two scenes. And the consequences work by Weta Workshop in crafting collectively sensible robotic monsters needs to be given some credit score. There’s a throwback high quality to this side of the movie that’s admittedly welcome.
However Mooney’s lack of expertise at directing is clear. His script is a meandering mess with shallow character arcs and a horribly uneven tone. The makes an attempt at each horror or drama really feel undercut by the movie’s fixed sense of irony. For a movie concerning the Y2K occasion, you’d additionally do not know what Y2K was until you’re already acquainted, because the film by no means bothers to clarify it or present a lot clarification for the villainous pressure or its origins. Not {that a} horror movie wants to clarify issues in excruciating element, however right here it’s such an afterthought that you just really feel adrift watching the movie.
There have been nuggets of fine concepts right here. However Mooney wanted a surer hand to assist in him within the path and enhancing to craft collectively a coherent movie. Y2K is sadly a deeply uninteresting viewing regardless of all its audacious occurrences. Sadly, the actual horror for these born after 1990 is the belief that interval movies are actually being made concerning the decade through which they grew up.
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