WARNING: Major spoilers for Y2K ahead
Descriptions of graphic violence/gore and some bloody images ahead
The acclaimed production company A24 ventured into the horror comedy space withY2K, the directorial debut of comedian and actor Kyle Mooney that mixes late-90s nostalgia with brutal machine-on-man violence. Set up early as a high school sex comedy,Y2Kquickly turns into an apocalyptic survival movie when the main characters are faced with the arrival of the new millennium, which brings with it theinfamous Y2K bug that everyone in 1999 feared. While in reality there were very few real-world consequences of the calendar turning over, inY2Kit brings an evil AI singularity driving killer robots.
Bythe ending ofY2K, the robots have seemingly been defeated, but not before many characters meet various comical yet grisly ends at the hands of everyday household machines and hybrid killer robots. Over the course of the movie’s action, many background characters are killed in brutal fashion; some party-going high schoolers are set on fire, while another has his face ripped to shreds by an electric razor. One poor young man even has part of his anatomy devoured by a sentient blender. However, a number ofmajorY2Kcharactersare also killed, albeit with varying levels of brutality.
9Farkas (Eduardo Franco)
Failed Rollerblade Rail Slide
In a vast departure from the character he’s most famous for (empty-headed stoner Argyle from Netflix’sStranger Things),Eduardo Franco plays the aggressive bully Farkas inY2K. He acts as the main foil for Jaeden Martell and Julian Dennison’s characters Eli and Danny early in the movie, but finds himself aligned with them when midnight hits and the machines go berserk. After being trapped in the garage of the house party they all attended, Farkas leaves with the survivors of the massacre, choosing (by taking them out of the hands of CJ) rollerblades as his preferred mode of transportation.
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The abrasive and mean Farkas makes it all of 15 feet before he tries to grind on the pole of an overturned basketball hoop. In an aggressive bit of karma from the universe,Farkas slips off the rail and smashes his head on the ground, dying instantly. As with most of the deaths, it’s played for laughs given its inherent silliness: with people dying left and right at the hands of sentient machines, he dies after falling while showing off. In the grand scheme of the movie, it’s far from the most brutal death.
8Madison (Ellie Ricker)
Death By Flying Videotape
Madison is the classmate who Danny shares a passionate kiss with at midnight inY2Kafter impressing the entire party with his confidence. Unfortunately, Madison never makes it out of the party, or at least she isn’t seen again in the movie. While Madison is screaming in terror, the VCR in the living room where the party is taking placefires out a VHS tape ofVarsity Bluesat high speed, and drills Madison right in the face.
Madison’s death was never actually confirmed, but given that everyone else at the party was massacred, and she’s never heard from again, we’re counting it. It’s far from brutal in the context of the other deaths on the list, but at least it wasn’t a legitimate accident like Farkas' death; Madison was actively killed by the machines.
7Danny (Julian Dennison)
Impaled By The Screenslayer
Julian Dennison’s Danny is set up as the 1B to Jaeden Martell’s 1A protagonist Eli at the beginning ofY2K. The two boys echo the Seth and Evan fromSuperbadroles, seeking to hook up with girls at a New Year’s Eve party. That makesDanny’s early death in the movie genuinely shocking, as he seems like a “safe” character while many other minor characters meet bloody ends. Danny’s death is not quite as gruesome as some of the other kills on this list, but it’s still pretty brutal to watch.
Danny suffers a relatively clean death in the form of a simple entry and exit wound through his midsection, but it still feels brutal in how sudden and unexpected it is.
Danny is impaled on the spear (?) arm of the Screenslayer, a bipedal monstrosity of collected technology driven by the PC from the house where they were partying. While he isn’t killed right away, and suffers a relatively clean death in the form of a simple entry and exit wound through his midsection, it still feels brutal in how sudden and unexpected it is.
6Aiden (Luca Stagnitta)
Fan Blade Through The Skull
The party-goers are first alerted to the physical threat of the machines when they discover the body of Aiden, the boy Raleigh was hooking up with during the party. The two were on a mechanical bed, playing with the adjustable settings when they were last seen before midnight, and while the audience doesn’t get to see Aiden’s death, they see the aftermath:his dead body with a fan blade stuck through his skull.
Eli’s mom is played by Alicia Silverstone, which is a bit of meta 90s nostalgia; Silverstone was a movie icon of the 1990s, starring in famous films likeThe Crush,Clueless, andBatman & Robin.
As Raleigh tells it,the mechanical bed took on a life of its own and threw Aiden into the fan, which was turning so rapidly (theoretically as a hostile machine itself) that it lodged a blade in his head. It’s the first death in the movie, and its brutality serves as an indicator of what’s to come shortly thereafter.
5CJ (Daniel Zolghadri)
CDs To The Face
CJ manages to make it all the way through 90% of the journey from the party massacre to the high school, where Eli and Laura plan to end the machine threat once and for all, connecting with Ash along the way and proving his skill as a rapper. His end is marked by heroism, ashe manages to push Fred Durst out of the way of a round of flying CDsfired by a robot in an attempt to kill the rocker/rapper.
Y2K Soundtrack Guide: Every Song & When They Play
A24’s Y2K is finally here, and here is a full breakdown of every song that appears in the film, with many of them playing into 1990s nostalgia.
Unfortunately,the CDs wind up peppering CJ’s face, opening up his skull and killing him. The fact that he’s killed by literal CDs while saving Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst is unquestionably funny on the surface, but that doesn’t do anything to lessen the actual intensity of the kill. It’s a truly brutal way to die, and serves as a vicious exclamation point to the climactic battle at the high school.
4Trevor (Jacob Moskovitz)
Burned Alive By RC Car Robot
Soccer Chris is the older guy that Laura kisses at midnight, and like most 1990s-era movie bullies, he rolls with a crew of toadies. One such toady is his friend Trevor, who suffers from the first on-screen kill by the machines. A remote-controlled car rolls into the middle of the party, and Trevor defiantly steps up to it, asking who’s driving it. He is answered by the car itself, whichraises a lighter up to an aerosol can and sets Trevor’s head on fire, killing him quickly. It’s the first shockingly brutal death that occurs on-screen, but it isn’t the most brutal.
3Soccer Chris (The Kid Laroi)
Soccer Chris himself suffers from a similarly violent death, as he manages to find himself in the kitchen of the house where the party is being held. In the immediate chaos of the machines taking over, everyone is running frantically, and different party-goers are being pursued and killed by various devices. Chris is mid-conversation with Eli and Laura when he’s tripped, and falls head-first into the microwave, whichimmediately turns on and begins to fry his head from the inside-out. The aftermath is (thankfully) not revealed, but it can be imagined what that might look like, and it is ghastly.
2Garrett (Kyle Mooney)
Decapitated By The Screenslayer
Writer-director Kyle Mooney saved one of the most brutal (and outright silly) deaths for himself inY2K. The upgraded Screenslayer manages to track down Eli, Laura, and their band of survivors as they’re making their way back to the high school to stop the Singularity,which leads Kyle Mooney’s burnout video store manager Garrett to step up and battle it hand-to-hand. However, his weapons of choice against the chainsaw-armed Screenslayer are a pair of devilsticks, the recreational wooden sticks used for juggling–which he doesn’t know how to even use.
The outcome is pretty much exactly what one would expect;Garrett rushes the monstrous machine and has his arm sliced off immediately, and in a matter of seconds the chainsaw arm cuts his head off, and it rolls to the feet of the other survivors. It’s an entirely comical scene given Garrett’s misplaced bravado and the sheer swiftness of his death, but having both his arm and head chopped off makes this one of the most brutal deaths in the entire movie.
1Raleigh (Lauren Balone)
The unquestioned most brutal death inY2Kcame during the initial party massacre. Laura’s friend Raleigh, who seems to have chameleoned in with a different crowd over time (as the movie explains was common during the 1990s), is frantically trying to escape the slaughter at the same time as Eli, Danny, and Laura. They come face-to-face with Raleigh down a hallway, but after a brief moment, she screams out while blood sprays on the wall behind her. It’s revealed thata small robot which is operating a power drill cut into her achilles, forcing her to the ground immediately.
The robot (which is revealed to be driven by a Tamagotchi, in one of the most fun bits of 90s nostalgia) wastes no time inpressing the drill bit into Raleigh’s skull, scrambling her brains and killing her immediately. Danny stomps the robot into pieces, but the damage was already well done at that point. It’s the pièce de résistance on the house party massacre, and the sheer creativity and bloodiness makes it the most brutal death in all ofY2K.
Y2K
Cast
On the last night of 1999, two high school juniors crash a New Years Eve party, only to find themselves fighting for their lives in this dial-up disaster comedy.
