What Happened To Monday Review

Noomi Rapace stars as seven sisters living one life in a world where siblings are banned. Here’s my review.

When climate change causes world wide crop failure, genetically modified crops are used to help feed the world. These GM crops cause an increase in birth defects and an increase in multiple births, leading to huge overpopulation. Scientist Nicolette Cayman (Glenn Close) suggests an idea of a strict one child per family policy, with all subsequent siblings being put into cryosleep until the population has stabilised and the families can be reunited. This leads Terrence Settman (Willem Dafoe) to take in his seven septuplet granddaughters when his daughter passes away in childbirth. He teaches them at home, until one day they have to go out in to the real world to go to school. With seven children he has named each one after a day of the week, so one of the girls get to out on their day. It is a harsh upringing for them at times, but it does prepare them to survive in a unique way.

Presenting to the outside world as banker Karen Settman, each of these different women (all played by Noomi Rapace) struggles living in the confined world. They share With Karen in line for a big promotion, on the day of a big presentation – one that all seven sisters have contributed to – Monday doesn’t come home. The next day, Tuesday takes her turn and goes out to find her, but things start to spiral out of control as Tuesday is taken to the Child Allocation Bureau. Can the seven sister maintain the charade of Karen Settman? What is really happening at the C.A.B? And what happened to Monday?

Noomi Rapace gives a great performance, perhaps her strongest since Lisbeth in the Millenium triology. I would like to say she gives seven great performances, but a couple of the sisters don’t get enough screen time to display any real characteristics. Maybe… three great performances and two good ones. Glenn Close clearly enjoys her time onscreen, but I have to say Willem Dafoe should have been in the film more, but isn’t that always the case with Willem Dafoe?

There are a couple of issues with the film. The idea that the sisters are only living one seventh of a life is only briefly touched upon – think The Prestige, without revealing any spoilers – but never really explored. And there is a problem that a lot of dystopian films suffer from: the rules the government put in place don’t really make sense, and don’t actually seem to work. Maybe I’m just jaded by half a decade of young adult fiction splitting up future generations along arbitrary lines, but there always seems to be the fall back that “Government” or “Big Business” is controlling the population. However, here it seems like it is just one scientist working in one city that had an idea that was implemented on the whole world, and would be impossible to enforce.

What Happened To Monday is an entertaining enough thriller that will hold your interest throughout. It’s not perfect, and it gets a little too dark in places, but it’s a film I would definitely recommend.