Starring Rachel Zegler and, er, Fred Durst, along comes Y2K, A24’s comedy that imagines a cyber apocalypse at the end of the millennium. Here’s the first trailer:
What if the year 2000 problem – the bug that was supposed to crash just about every computer on the planet at the end of 1999 – was even scarier than predicted? That’s the question posed by director and co-writer Kyle Mooney’s upcoming A24 comedy, logically called Y2K.
It features Jaeden Martell and future Snow White star Rachel Zegler as a couple of teenagers who, during a party to celebrate the turn of the millennium, watch as society collapses into a cyber apocalypse. Rather than merely have computers glitch out and planes fall from the sky, however, Mooney and co-writer Evan Winter’s comedy horror sees a form of sentient intelligence cobble together killer robots from spare parts, a bit like the rogue computer Proteus in the 1970s thriller, Demon Seed.
Expect to see screaming teens felled by VHS tapes ejected like bullets (a sight gag possibly inspired by Stephen King’s sole feature as director, Maximum Overdrive) and a deadly contraption that takes in a power drill and a Tamagotchi.
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It all looks delightfully off-kilter, though it does have the faint air of This Is The End about it – that being Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s ho-hum 2013 comedy which is also about a party being interrupted by the apocalypse. This Is The End co-starred Jonah Hill, who also happens to be a producer on Y2K, so perhaps there’s some creative DNA being shared around there somewhere.
Anyway, here’s the first Y2K trailer:
Y2K debuted at South by Southwest in March 2024, where it received decent if not outright ecstatic reviews. Maybe it’s the robot-infused subject matter, or perhaps it’s just the appeal of seeing an apocalypse happen in the age of dial-up internet connections and AOL floppy discs, but Y2K still looks worth checking out to us. Oh, and Limp Bizkit frontman turned filmmaker Fred Durst also shows up somewhere.
Y2K is out in US cinemas on the 6th December. If and when we hear of a UK release, we’ll let you know.
