y2k movie review — Eli, Laura, Ash, and Fred Durst in *Y2k*. Photo: A24

Stories can’t rely on nostalgia alone

If you’re old enough to remember the late ’90s, you no doubt remember the so-called Y2K problem. Back then, many computer programs used only two digits for years (i.e. 99 instead of 1999). What would happen when the year flipped over to 2000? Would computers think we had gone back to 1900? If so, how would they react to this apparent time travel?

There were widespread fears of an apocalyptic computer crash when the new millennium began. Of course, it turned out to be a whole lot of nothing. Y2K imagines an alternate world where the worst case scenario did occur.

This movie piles on the nostalgia. Lots of effort was expended into making it look accurate. It begins with a computer screen showing someone logging into the now archaic ’90s internet, complete with the America Online logo and the famous “you got mail” voice.

The soundtrack is wall to wall with popular songs from the era. I was a teenager in 1999 and many of the tracks were stuff I listened to constantly. The young actors in this movie look and act similar to teens from that era. That goes double for Ash, the burnout chick, who looks *exactly* like how I remember some of the girls at my high school.

occasional moments of inspiration, but not enough to sustain a feature film

Unfortunately, Y2K doesn’t have much going for it other than nostalgia. The plot is generic teen comedy fare. Nerdy teenager Eli (Jaeden Martell) has a crush on the beautiful and popular Laura (Rachel Zegler), but is worried about telling her how he feels. His party animal best friend, Danny (Julian Dennison), eggs him on. The duo decides to crash a New Year’s Eve house party, where Eli is hoping for a chance to get it on with Laura.

At midnight, all machines suddenly go haywire and become sentient killing machines. Several of the partygoers are gruesomely killed. Eli and Laura end up on the run together. It turns out that Laura is some kind of computer hacking genius who might know how to defeat the machines.

They flee the house and end up with an assortment of other teens, including delinquent burnout Ash (Lachlan Watson) and Eli’s stoner friend, Garrett (Kyle Mooney, who also directed). They are later joined by Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, who plays himself. Durst’s band, Limp Bizkit, was enormously popular in 1999, so he make sense as a nostalgic cameo.

Durst is pretty funny in this movie, but it’s difficult to reconcile this middle-aged former celebrity with his young and rambunctious counterpart of 25 years ago. No effort is made to make Durst look younger. I guess the stress of the apocalypse is making him age at twice the normal rate?

Y2K, which was directed by former Saturday Night Live performer Kyle Mooney, suffers from a major identity crisis. It’s a teen comedy, a horror movie, a sci-fi killer robots flick, and even a quasi-zombie movie combined into one. The beginning works reasonably well, but the overbooked story fizzles in the second half. Many films suffer from having too many ideas, and this is one of the most blatant cases.

I would love for the late ’90s to get a great period piece, like what American Graffiti did for the early ’60s and Dazed and Confused did for the ’70s. Unfortunately, Y2K doesn’t have anything important to say about the era. This is especially disappointing because it was distributed by A24, a studio known for style and originality. This is no I Saw the TV Glow or Everything Everywhere All At Once, that’s for sure.