SNL alum and Brigsby Bear co-writer Kyle Mooney makes his feature directorial debut with A24’s Y2K, which I previously couldn’t shut up about after its SXSW 2024 premiere in March.
Tuesday, Mooney and company rolled out the first trailer for the horror-tinged disaster comedy, which counts Mid90s director Jonah Hill and The Bear creator Christopher Storer among its roster of producers.
When two high school friends decide to crash a New Year’s Eve party as the world says goodbye to 1999 and hello to a new millennium, what should be merely a night of mild debauchery and confessed crushes becomes something else entirely by way of a clever flip from writers Mooney and Evan Winter. In short, instead of now-laughed-about Y2K fears falling apart and thus not facilitating the apocalypse that some had genuinely worried might break open at the top of 2000, Mooney’s film imagines the worst case scenario.
The film makes good use of the tonal possibilities of this premise, weaving in plenty of truly laugh-out-loud moments and full-fledged horror elements alike. Much can also be said for the cast, as it’s hard to imagine anyone else aside from our core trio—Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, and Julian Dennison—bringing this story to the big screen. Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, The Kid Laroi, Daniel Zolghadri, Eduardo Franco, and Lachlan Watson are among those who’ve also been assembled for what will hopefully be merely the first of many directing projects for Mooney.
Y2K emerged as one of the highlights of this year’s SXSW offerings back in March. At the time, I noted that I "fucking loved this film" after catching its world premiere, pointing out that it excels as both "a late 1990s teen coming-of-age comedy" and "a gloriously campy monster film." The audience loved it too. Five months and a whole lot of movies later, Y2K remains one of my favorite films of the year.
Catch it in theaters on Dec. 6. Fittingly, the trailer arrives on the birthday of none other than Fred Durst, who also appears in the film and whose 2024 has thus far been decidedly A24-aligned.