Y2K

It should probably have been rather telling that, at the 9pm showing of this at the Odeon Basingstoke on a Monday night, I was the sole viewer in attendance, for a film so confused about its own identity that it leaves one unsure of how to describe it. There should have also been something of a give away with the fact that it had been rather unceremoniously released in the same week as Snow White (A24 seeming to try and hide this under the limelight of Disney’s latest controversy), with no marketing or fanfare or promotion, with one only knowing it was finally being released having seen it on Odeon’s app whilst looking for tickets to another film this week. And that’s from someone who was really looking forward to seeing it, someone who had followed the behind the scenes of the production, managed to avoid the trailers and reviews from it’s US release (similarly dropped at a random time in the year last year), and had been continuously trying to find out when it would eventually, if ever, get a release on UK screens.

Given all this, it is a shame to find oneself rather just falling flat with it and unable to come up with a better descriptor than ‘meh’. There are highlights and there are flaws but neither of them ever quite outweigh the other, leaving us with a story so unsure about it’s own existence that it will likely confined to the ash-heap of A24’s lesser ranks. And it’s a shame as this story on paper really reads as one that should fit into the A24 mantle with ease and little issue; set on NYE 1999, Julian Dennison and Jaeden Martell crash a high school party, only to find themselves in the middle of a robot take over of the world. There’s one obvious character development that sends the story in a separate direction down a hill (at one point, even a literal one) from which it never manages to recover. Plot thread and character beat after plot thread and character beat are introduced and unceremoniously closed off with little point, to the extend that there is then never a fulfilling resolution that appears with any meaningful result. All this adds up to a film that never quite sets out to whom it is aiming itself at; the millennium being probably too soon for the nostalgia machine to turn it’s attention to, and the target audience for such a flick having little interest in the principal era to begin with. Not even the ever fantastic Rachel Zegler can do much to lift this higher out of the ramparts, her trademark warmth and compassion being lost to a script unsuited to her skill set, with character beats so bland, one could use it to counteract the spiciest vindaloo.

At the end of the day, this was never going to be a big film, and it’s release over here will almost certainly get lost in the swirling mass that is Snow White. Probably not a bad thing for all involved, although it’s greatest failing is saying that anyone would be able to insert a USB stick in the correct way round first time.