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Jaeden Martell as Eli, Rachel Zegler as Laura and Julian Dennison as Danny star in a scene from the movie "Y2K." The OSV News classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. (OSV News photo/A24)

Movie Review: ‘Y2K’


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OSV News Filed Under: Movie & Television Reviews

NEW YORK (OSV News) – Twenty-five years on, is it time to wax nostalgic for the turn of the millennium? If the low-minded disaster-themed comedy “Y2K” (A24) is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding “No.”

Set on New Year’s Eve 1999, director and co-writer Kyle Mooney’s sordid counter-history imagines what might have happened if the technological breakdown of the title had not only turned out to be real but had transformed every machine in the world into a murderous anti-human predator. This premise allows him to unleash a flood of over-the-top bloodletting.

Caught up in the evolving global crisis are timid high schooler Eli (Jaeden Martell), his more outgoing best pal, Danny (Julian Dennison), and Laura (Rachel Zegler), the fellow student he longs to make his girlfriend. The fact that two of these three characters end up trapped, at one point, in a runaway porta potty says a lot about the tone of their subsequent adventures.

The movie showcases a degraded view of human sexuality, typified by the fact that the ultimate symbol of the bond between Danny and Eli is a condom the former gives the latter. As penned in collaboration with Evan Winter, moreover, the script hardly contains a single sentence that’s free of coarseness.

Wise moviegoers, accordingly, will make it a resolution to skip “Y2K.”

The film contains intermittent but extreme gross-out gore, numerous gruesome images, brief graphic pornography, upper female nudity, frivolously viewed shoplifting, drug use and underage drinking, about a half-dozen profanities, several milder oaths, relentless rough and crude language, obscene gestures. The OSV News classification is O — morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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