Review #358: Y2K (2024)

October 2025 Holiday Horror Review #31 - Y2K (2024)

[Unfortunately this movie does not appear to be streaming anywhere for free, but it is included in several subscriptions on various platforms.]

Happy Halloween, everyone!

In retrospect I should have watched this movie at the start of the month; of all of the New Year's-themed movies I've seen this is the only one that spends the majority of its runtime actually on New Year's Day rather than Eve. But whatever, you live and you learn (unless you get killed by a Tamagotchi).

Y2K starts off on the last day of 1999, right on the cusp of the year 2000- the day when (as people thought at the time) an unexpected programming error was likely to disrupt computers all over the world, potentially resulting in the fall of mankind. (As you have probably guessed by now, in real life we got through it with little to no issue, but the characters in this film are not quite so lucky.) Once the clock strikes midnight, technology everywhere starts rebelling against mankind, capturing and killing every human possible in an attempt to use human biology to augment their processing power and reach the logical goal of technology: the Singularity.

I really wanted to like this movie. Having lived as a teenager during the Y2K phenomenon, I really enjoyed all of the references, the music, the fashion, and the jokes at the expense of people who were around back then. As a little virtual time capsule I think this movie does a pretty good job of capturing the look and feel of the era, and so if you can turn your brain off a bit you can totally enjoy it for that.

But beyond that, this movie is kind of a dud. Most of the characters are pretty dull or annoying, and the action (there is unfortunately a lot of it) is pretty poorly-done. Not to give too many spoilers, but the climax of the movie happens when some people basically just go up on a stage and talk to a bunch of other people to rally them into revolt while the murderous robots stand 15 feet away doing nothing. I get that action was a secondary concern to the humor (and this movie is pretty funny) but there's way too much action in here for something that doesn't really care about whether the action is good. What ends up happening is that any time the robots are on screen there doesn't really seem to be any stakes- some characters die and some live, based entirely on the movie's call sheet and not because any of them are particularly capable or deserving of survival.

And my main issue with this movie: the protagonist, or more specifically, the actor that plays him, Jaeden Martell. I've seen him in a few other movies, and I feel bad saying this, but Jaeden Martell is a terrible actor. He has virtually no charisma or stage presence. Now that can be fine in a movie where he's supposed to have no stage presence (he was passable in It: Chapters 1 and 2, because his character is supposed to have difficulties speaking so the actor's lack of charisma is less noticeable) and the argument could be made that that's why he was cast in this movie- his character in Y2K is supposed to be a dweeb loser- but his character is also supposed to be the romantic lead and hero of the movie. I felt no chemistry whatsoever between him and his female co-star, and the imbalance was entirely because of him. He felt like a passenger in the movie, and not only because the first third of the movie is him sitting idly by while his more boisterous and charismatic friend leads him around everywhere and gets the party started at his expense. This movie desperately needed Jaeden to rise up and play the hero he was written to be, but I just don't think that is anywhere in this actor's range. I've seen this movie a couple times and I had that same thought both times. However, this time, it was just a couple weeks after I saw another movie that really made me a bit conflicted about my thoughts on Jaeden Martell- and that movie is I Know What You Did Last Summer.

You see, IKWYDLS had Freddy Prinze Jr. in it, and when I was watching that film, I had a distinct thought of, "Wow, I remembered this guy having WAY more charisma than this." I remembered back to my first viewing of Y2K and I thought... "Holy crap, Freddy Prinze Jr. has the exact same lack of charisma as Jaeden Martell." And then, the more I watched, the more I realized: not only do those two actors in those two movies have the exact same non-presence, they look and sound extremely similar too. You could tell me the two of them were closely related and I would believe you. (I don't think they are, I checked because I thought surely Jaeden Martell has to be a Nepo baby or something, but I found no evidence of such.) So I guess the question becomes, if pop culture remembers Freddy Prinze Jr. as just a normal actor with at least a normal amount of charisma, will it remember Jaeden Martell the same way? I don't know. Time will tell I suppose.

Anyway, Y2K is a fun movie but it falls flat in a lot of ways. I recommend watching it for the nostalgia if nothing else.

Overall Rating: 5/10 President Dursts

Additional Viewing: If you want more entertainment pertaining to the Y2K phenomenon, YouTuber Kurtis Conner has a fantastic video about it!