The Y2K bug that threatened to plunge the world into chaos as 1999 rolled into the year 2000 didn’t quite bring on the end times, as evidenced by the fact that you’re reading this on a functioning computer in a mostly intact world. But that era’s atmosphere of techno-fear and paranoia is alive and well, sometimes in modern life and certainly in the trailer for A24’s new disaster comedy, Y2K.
In case you’re not familiar with the whole Y2K thing, it was theorized that computers of the late 90s wouldn’t know what to do when the year changed from 1999 to 2000. It was thought that maybe computers would not be able to interpret the “00”—and that rather than just chill and ride the vibes, they would have a complete meltdown, plunging humanity back into the stone age. None of that happened of course. The Y2K bug did not cause machines to meltdown, nor did they gain sentience and rebel.
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But they do all that in Y2K. The film stars Rachel Zegler, best known for roles in Steven Spielberg’s wonderful 2021 remake of West Side Story and Disney’s upcoming live-action Snow White. It was produced by Jonah Hill and co-written and directed by Kyle Mooney.
Mooney is a sketch comedy veteran who got his start posting videos he filmed with his troupe Good Neighbor on YouTube way back in the site’s early days. Good Neighbor published just over 40 sketches over four years, and only a handful have less than a million views. Kyle also posted several sketches to a personal YouTube channel, many of them featuring characters he would later bring to Saturday Night Live, like the socially awkward SoCal skater named Todd.
This isn’t Mooney’s feature film directorial debut, though. Back in 2017, he released an underappreciated comedy-drama called Brigsby Bear, about a guy who is determined to film an ending to the children’s TV show he watched while living in an underground bunker for his entire life.
Y2K will hit theaters on December 6. Check out the trailer above, and keep your eyes peeled for Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst at the two-minute mark.