Image: “Y2K” (2024) Movie Poster via IMDb
SNL alumnus Kyle Mooney’s new movie takes viewers back to a time long before our own. A time when you couldn’t use your computer and your phone simultaneously. A time when turning on “Thong Song” by Sisqó at a party made you the coolest guy in the room instead of someone who people cover their drinks around. A time when Bill Clinton was more than just a comically large portrait looming over every scene in “Longlegs” (2024). Welcome to New Year’s Eve, 1999.
“Y2K” (2024) follows Eli (Jaeden Martell), a hopelessly virginal high schooler, as the world’s worst fears about the new millennium come true during the biggest party of the year. With the help of his best friend, his bullies, his crush (played by the incomparable Rachel Zegler) and a familiar face whose cameo I won’t spoil, what was supposed to be Eli’s big night turns into a fight for survival that may determine the very fate of the human race. Killer Tamagotchis, a soundtrack full of enough Chumbawumba and Goo Goo Dolls to send your stoner uncle into a coma and quips that will immediately remind you of Mooney’s SNL origins make Y2K a hilarious, blood-soaked teen comedy that reminds us of a time when movies like “Eurotrip” (2004) and “American Pie” (1999) were common enough that companies didn’t have to fall over themselves to figure out how to get teens into movie theaters — they just came on their own. “Y2K” is also a reminder of a time when a movie being targeted towards teens meant adult topics and adult comedy, which was refreshing to see considering I’ve grown up in a time where “teen media” has been code for Marvel movies.
While “Y2K” is on its own a decent and fun teen horror-comedy, the comedic talents of its cast are really what elevates Mooney’s writing. Jaeden Martell, who I feel like I spent my entire tween years watching ride bikes on screen, has a comedic delivery that’s subtle but all the funnier for it. The reservation and sheepishness he channels through the dorky role make the moments of gross-out humor hit so much harder, especially the groan-inducing port-a-potty slide. Rachel Zegler, at this point, is an actress who has proven herself so many times in so many different ways that you don’t need me to tell you how good she is. Give her a phonebook to read in front of the camera and she’ll walk away with an Oscar. But this role really stands out against her other work, although she plays the mean-girl prom queen with the same level of familiarity and charisma she gives her sweeter characters. I hope to see her in more A24-produced projects, and especially more comedy. Her charm works to her advantage when landing a joke, she’s as good at making you laugh as she is at making you cry, and that range and talent makes punchlines punchier. Julian Dennison, Lachlan Watson, Kyle Mooney himself and The Kid Laroi round out the rest of the cast, and though not everybody makes it to the credits (think of “Y2K” as a cross between “Scream,” “Terminator” and “American Pie”) they each carve out their own memorable place in the film.
In a Q&A with Mooney hosted by A24 for student journalists (an amazing opportunity that I think more studios should follow suit in), we learned that Weta, the New Zealand-based SFX studio that is responsible for the effects behind cinematic feats such as the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and James Cameron’s “Avatar” movies, helped create Y2K’s blend of practical and digital effects. It definitely shows — the practical effects used to create killer robots and nightmarish tech monsters that are actually, physically there were phenomenal and unexpected. One moment in particular where tendril-like wires reach out to assimilate another device into their hive took my breath away as I realized those tentacle wires were real and interacting with physical props. It is a bit depressing that we’ve arrived at a point where practical effects are an impressive novelty instead of movie magic’s status quo as it used to be, but that doesn’t stop me from oohing and aahing as real robot monsters stomp across the screen.
Another aspect of the film millennials are sure to get a kick out of are the familiar faces from the 90’s that pop up throughout. I asked director Kyle Mooney what it was like to direct those figures from his childhood, to go from watching them on-screen to being on the other side of it alongside them. Mooney said that while it is “scary to give notes to your heroes,” he felt he was “always learning” from his actors, even the younger ones, and spoke to how fulfilling that was: “You know that you’re in good hands.” On recreating those memories of the late 1990s, Mooney said the Video Store (which features prominently in the film) was a key figure. “It’s such an emblematic space of the time,” the director noted. “… [We were] trying to come up with an amalgamation [of memories] that any person who lived in that time can say ‘that’s the video store I remember going to.’”
Nostalgia and memory are ingrained in any high school party movie. In “Y2K” the focus is put not just on bringing the audience back to that specific moment in history, but to that specific moment in all of our lives. Taking the anxieties, desires, and stresses of being an older teenager and turning all that angst outward into a literal apocalypse. It works as satire, as homage, but also stands on its own as a horror-comedy that’s as much for our generation as the one that came before us. “Y2K” is playing in theaters across the US starting on Friday, Dec. 6.
Elijah Fischer is a third-year Media & Culture Major.