A widespread fear that the world would end when the clocks switched from 1999 to 2000 became known as the "Y2K problem." A24's disaster comedy film Y2K puts a violent and humorous twist on the conspiracy theory, pitting a bunch of teenagers against technology run amok.
Rachel Zegler, Jaeden Martell, Julian Dennison, and more stars in the 2024 film, released theatrically in December 2024. Y2K finally came to streaming in early April and is now available on Max.
The movie kicks off with outcast best friends Eli (Martell) and Danny (Dennison) trying to find a "cool" way to celebrate New Year's. When they learn about a party held by a popular kid from their school, they crash the party, hoping that Eli can finally talk to the girl he likes, Laura (Zegler).
But once the clock strikes midnight, the party devolves into murderous chaos as the house's tech starts murdering partygoers. A Tamagotchi drills through a girl's head, a teen is murdered by a VHS player shooting tapes at passersby, and one gets his head melted in a microwave. Things quickly get worse as the majority of teens at the party are murdered, leaving only a few survivors.
Y2K quickly kills off a few main characters
One of the most surprising things about Y2K is how fast some leading players die. Given how the film starts with Eli and Danny as the main characters, you wouldn't expect one of them to die before the halfway mark.
While trying to escape Chris' house, Danny is murdered by a rogue robot. Not long after, their high school bully, Farkos (Eduardo Franco), also dies, although his death isn't tech-related. He tries to grind on a rail on his skates and immediately smacks his head on the ground in a pretty hilarious moment.
When they leave the party, the teen survivors include Laura, Eli, and two of Farkos' friends, Ash (Lachlan Watson) and CJ (Daniel Zolghadri). The foursome tracks down Laura's ex, an engineering major named Jonas (Mason Gooding), to potentially shut down the technology for good. They also meet with Eli's friend, Garrett (Kyle Mooney), a video store clerk.
Fighting Amalgamation
Not long after escaping the party, the group goes head-to-head with a massive robot that has added various tech parts to make itself vast and terrifying. The invention calls itself the "Amalgamation."
Laura, who is a talented hacker, manages to find out more about the robot's plans. They want to enslave humanity, and they're congregating at their school, where they've switched over to a new internet system, seemingly causing all of this mayhem.
Laura creates a special virus to destroy the robots, but it requires getting to the school and injecting it into the central machine. They have to fight the Amalgamation and other rogue robots to get there, resulting in more deaths. Garrett gets killed trying to fight it. Not long after, the group hides in a music store where they meet up with Fred Durst, playing himself.
At the school, the teens find the place swarming with robots and dozens of captured people. The robots have already begun turning some of them into robot-slaves. CJ becomes another fatality when he sacrifices himself in front of another killer robot to save Fred.
In the end, Laura and Eli work together to inject the USB drive into the main computer, but it uses electricity to zap them. Luckily, Eli has kept the condom that Danny continuously tries to give to him at the beginning of the movie. He uses it to protect Laura's hand so she can use the USB, shutting down the robots once and for all.
Five years later
With the robots defeated, all of the enslaved people go back to normal. Eli and Laura share a kiss and begin dating. When the movie skips five years ahead, we find out that they're still together and have remained close friends with Ash, who drives them to the graveyard to visit Danny's grave. Eli tells his friend he's running a music blog now, and Laura has a job coding for Durst Industries.
But then Ash's iPod glitches and the camera zooms in, showing a quick glimpse of the evil AI, meaning it is seemingly still out there somewhere and could come back.
There is a brief post-credits scene featuring Danny singing the "Thong Song."