Teenagers save the world in Y2K, a larky take on the events that didn’t play out as one millennium clicked over into another and planes didn’t fall out of the sky, entire networks of computers didn’t crash and hospitals and traffic systems didn’t grind to a halt.
That’s either because of the massive amount of behind-the-scenes work done to fix the problem by armies of techies, or it was never going to be a problem at all in the first place and was all got up by the same bunch who brought you the faked Moon landings and all that blah.
In this version of events it does all happen, in monster, gonzo, splatter style – the toaster trying to kill you, the VHS discovering its inner mass murderer and so on – and the only thing standing between the human race and its annihilation is a bunch of plucky teens.
Director and co-writer Kyle Mooney was not only there in 1999 but, born in 1984, was the age of his protagonists and was clearly taking notes – Bill Clinton, the AOL Messenger, Chumbawamba’s Tubthumpin’ and pictures of naked women on the computer loading at the lightning speed of one line at a time thanks to dial-up modems – he gets the mood music right before launching his story about two geeky uncool guys going to a New Year’s Eve party they’re probably not even invited to. And at the witching hour of midnight, it all kicks off.
Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison play the guys, Rachel Zegler the hot girl Eli (Martell) is too shy to approach properly – and in any case Laura has an older boyfriend with muscles – while Daniel Zolghadri and Lachlan Watson play another couple of familiar high school types, the would-be intellectual and the cadet anarchist.
Just saying, but the guys are all too old for their roles – 22 and 16 (or even 18) are a world apart – but it’s easy to let it go because their performances are so full of Disney derring-do. They are a likeable bunch. Martell has been popping up in roles not unlike this since he was called Jaeden Lieberher and was starring opposite Bill Murray in St. Vincent. Dennison has played charming overweight kids since 2016’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Zegler broke out in Spielberg’s West Side Story (still not seen that – mental note) while Zolghadri and Watson are new to me. Enjoyable, though they’re not really who this is about – that’s Martell’s Eli and Zegler’s Laura. For all concerned, this is surely the last time any of them will be playing teenagers.
It’s a ride for people who were there and have Fatboy Slim’s Praise You burned into the cerebral cortex, and who know that Fred Durst was in Limp Bizkit. Talking of which, Durst turns up, in what looks like is going to be a cameo but then extends quite a bit. He sings a song. He is game and fun and plays around with his public image a bit. The teenagers refer to him at all times as “Fred Durst”, which made me smile. Like it was “Your Highness”.
Mooney has also written himself into the story, as a video-store guy with white-guy dreads who likes to hang with the kids and is, surely, only weeks away from some charge of inappropriateness. He does it well, so well in fact that you wish he’d do less of it.
All in all though, this is a corny, silly, energetic, funny, well observed film that also has a little something to say about humanity becoming the slaves of machines – like that could ever happen. The only thing you can really fault it on is its transition from the active to the intimate as Eli tries to get closer to Laura – the killing pauses and the suggestion of romance is allowed to flower. This in spite of the fact that one or other of Laura and Eli’s best friends has just had his arm/head removed from his/her body or is now lying dead in a pool of their own blood after an attack by a killer CD player, or some such.
Gears grating? Part of the fun.
Y2K – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
