A24’s newest film, Y2K, is now in theaters, and audiences are taking notice of the practical effects in this “darkly hilarious techno apocalypse.”

The horror film has a simple but interesting concept. On New Year’s Eve in 1999, a high school party is ambushed by techno monsters, which are formed out of different pieces of technology at the time (think big tube TVs, Jeep Power Wheels, and VCRs). These monsters are controlled by a computer hive mind with the evil intention of turning humans into “microchip-controlled drones.”

The effects were created by Wētā Workshop and brought to life the vision of director Kyle Mooney (known for his work on Saturday Night Live) and co-writer/producer Evan Winter. Mooney and Winter went for practical effects rather than CGI because they felt strongly from the beginning that they wanted the movie to reflect the era it portrayed. They spoke highly about the ability of Wētā Workshop to create their vision:

“We were really fortunate to work with Wētā, and what’s so amazing about them, we had pretty decent ideas of where we wanted to land on how these creatures looked, but truly, their first round of conceptual art was so close, I think, to what we had in our head.”