The countless 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 social gathering through the titular occasion the place the movie posits that the Y2K phenomena (which was half fable and half fact) leads to machines coming to life and beginning to brutally homicide individuals. The countless barrage of cultural references solely compound the mediocre writing and enhancing, making for a spinoff 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. Properly, maybe it doesn’t ship on the comedy, because it substitutes interval motifs for jokes quite a lot of instances. In truth, 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 in regards to 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 would possibly work, however the practically steady assault of it grates rapidly.
It additionally doesn’t assist that Y2K is a very 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 collection of random scenes stacked on one another with little sense of plot development or that means. The movie’s incapability to arrange stakes or spacial continuity, and its awkwardly-timed comedy scenes lead to 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 ought to be given some credit score. There’s a throwback high quality to this facet of the movie that’s admittedly welcome.
However Mooney’s lack of expertise at directing is obvious. 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 in regards to the Y2K occasion, you’d additionally do not know what Y2K was except you might be already acquainted, because the film by no means bothers to elucidate it or present a lot clarification for the villainous power or its origins. Not {that a} horror movie wants to elucidate issues in excruciating element, however right here it’s such an afterthought that you simply really feel adrift watching the movie.
There have been nuggets of excellent concepts right here. However Mooney wanted a surer hand to help in him within the course and enhancing to craft collectively a coherent movie. Y2K is sadly a deeply uninteresting viewing regardless of all its audacious occurrences. Sadly, the true horror for these born after 1990 is the belief that interval movies are actually being made in regards to the decade through which they grew up.
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