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Stars: Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, Rachel Zegler
Director: Kyle Mooney
Distributor: Universal Pictures International

“SUCK IT!”

Two teenagers task themselves with getting laid and having the wildest time as they enter the new millennium. Sound familiar? Of course. Y2K is the ambitious comedy-sci-fi-horror mashup from writer-director, Kyle Mooney, formerly of SNL.

Best friends, Eli (Jaeden Martell) and Danny (Julian Dennison), are planning on gatecrashing the ultimate New Year’s Eve/Y2K party – “ultimate” because everyone will be there, even Eli’s crush, Laura (Rachel Zegler). Essentially, both lads are losers, but fairly wholesome. Just nerds. Fully equipped with action figures, CDs, and water bottles laced with vodka, Eli and Danny embark on a night that they will never forget..

The fabled “tale of two halves” is certainly apparent with Y2K. Its first half – seemingly a parody of your favourite 1998-2002 high school movies – is awful, yet its transition to sci-fi/horror is much more thrilling, though also underwhelming. With its increased grasp of sci-fi, Y2K does eventually evolve into the game of Spot the Reference. From WWF’s DX to The Lawnmower Man, the references are fun, but sadly, just a gag reel. At least Fred Durst is fun.

Generally, the majority of the cast are okay. Julian Dennison’s Danny is the clear standout of the main three, though he has the fewest minutes of screen time. Some performances are funny – typically by stoner characters, but it all feels too imitation. Cosplay. Hollow, if anything. No word of a lie, Fred Durst saves the third act from being a complete disaster.

Perhaps the greatest debate behind Y2K is whether its pre-sci-fi/horror life is deliberately bad in the vein of a commentary on late 90s teen cinema, or whether it’s just grotesquely poor. If Y2K is trying to tell us that American Pie, Road Trip, Loser etc. are all shit films, then that’s just a waste of time – we already knew this. Self-sabotage or not, Y2K is unfortunate – like most films set during key time periods – in that watching a film from the late 90s would just be a better viewing. The artificial or falseness of, “this was 1999!”, just isn’t fun. I would rather watch End of Days or Universal Soldier: The Return.

Sadly, Y2K suffers from a terrible identity crisis. Its former existence as teen-comedy and latter as sci-fi horror are not respectively strong enough to truly establish this film as such. Far from an impossible challenge, plenty of films have successful co-existence with genre, but Y2K is not one of them. The references are fun, but ultimately, it’s far too cosplay.