Movie Review: Y2K

Michael's Movie Grade: D-

A horror-comedy that is neither funny nor scary. 

The clever idea of a horror-comedy based on the Y2K computer scare is wasted here as it is the only somewhat original idea. Everything else in this movie is something we have all seen many times and often in much better films. The characters are pure teen movie stereotypes that have nothing interesting about them at all. There are little attempts at times to try and defy these characters' stereotypes, but these add no depth to these characters. That is because these attempts are more interested in the act of defy these stereotypes and not in making them feel like real people. In here lies the film's biggest flaw, the characters never feel like real people. We never believe or care about any of them. On top of this they often come off as obnoxious. It is true that teenagers can be obnoxious but characters in a movie should never be so obnoxious that they annoy the audience. It doesn't help that this obnoxiousness makes up for a lot of the film's humor. Because of this I not only didn't laugh at the jokes but found myself annoyed by the comedic moments as well. Comedy that is foulmouthed or noisy can be hilarious, but it is not automatically funny. And when this type of humor falls flat, it can be painful. The other source of humor is 90's references. Again, the filmmakers seem to think simply making a reference to something is funny in and of itself. These moments may give people in their 30's and 40's a sense of nostalgia but that is the only appeal they have. 

The horror-inspired scenes are probably the part of the film that works the best. However, even those parts could be much better. The violence is often gratuitous and at odds with silly tone of most of the movie. The filmmakers also seem more interested in these violent scenes than in actually creating anything memorable or scary. What does kind of work about these scenes though is that they create a real sense of danger. This danger comes from that the movie sets up that any character can die at any time making no one safe. However, even this would have worked better if we actually cared about the characters. 

This is a real waste of a clever premise.