Y2K (2024) - Movie Review

 Y2K - So bad it's......actually still bad

Rating - 2/10

“Let me tell you something: this toaster just tried to kill me.”

    Y2K—a movie that confuses stupidity with charm and chaos with entertainment. I went in hoping for a fun mix of 90s nostalgia and campy horror-comedy. What I got was a clunky mess that left me wishing I’d just rewatched an old VHS tape of Scream instead.

    The movie sets itself up as a throwback to 1999, and to its credit, it nails the look. The fashion, the music, the dial-up internet screeches—it’s all there. But that’s all it has going for it. The film is so obsessed with shouting, “Hey, remember this?!” that it forgets to tell a story worth caring about. Instead of leaning into the nostalgia to enhance the plot, it uses it as a crutch.

    The premise sounds like it could be a fun ride: computers and electronics come alive on New Year’s Eve 1999, wreaking havoc as the Y2K bug becomes a literal apocalypse. Unfortunately, after the initial setup, the movie just unravels. Characters run, scream, and die without purpose. It’s one long, messy sequence of nonsense strung together by bad jokes and random gore.

    The film clearly wants to be funny, but most of the humor is just awkward or gross for the sake of being gross. There’s a scene involving someone drinking pee that’s supposed to be outrageous, but it’s just uncomfortable and unnecessary. The few moments that did make me smirk were buried under piles of forced “LOL 90s!” references that felt like they were written by an algorithm.

    Not a single character in this movie feels worth rooting for. Eli, the nerdy lead, never grows beyond being the awkward guy archetype. His friend Danny had potential for comic relief, but he’s taken out way too early to matter. Everyone else is either bland or annoying, and by the halfway mark, I stopped caring who lived or died.

    What’s most frustrating is that Y2K starts with some energy. The first twenty minutes had me thinking, “Okay, maybe this will be a dumb-but-fun watch.” But as soon as the novelty wears off, the pacing slows to a crawl. The rest of the movie is just a repetitive slog of characters bickering, electronics attacking, and the audience counting down to the credits.

    Y2K tries to be a love letter to the turn of the millennium, but ends up being a jumble of half-baked ideas, weak jokes, and forgettable characters. It’s neither scary nor funny, and it completely wastes the potential of its wild concept. Come on A24, you're better than this.

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