In the year 2043, the world is overpopulated so the government has set a one child policy. Any siblings get taken to a Child Allocation Bureau to be frozen while the Earth tries to build a better future for them to awaken in. Seven identical sisters have been impersonating as one person, Karen Settman, in order to stay safe. Their names are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They are the Settman sisters. Each one goes out once a day as Karen Settman while the others remain in the apartment. Something goes wrong one day. Monday hasn’t returned after a day’s work and that concerns the others. Suddenly people are after the Settman sisters and are aware that they are siblings.
Blaine: I had a mixed reaction the first time while watching “What Happened to Monday?” because I didn’t like that a lot of the Settman sisters were being killed. I was hoping these sisters would survive. It pissed me off seeing them get killed one by one. I thought “What Happened to Monday?” would be more of a chase movie. The Settman sisters would be on the run and leave their apartment now that the Child Allocation Bureau is aware of them and knows where they live.
The sisters look like each other, but have different personalities. Noomi Rapace does such an amazing job of bringing life into these characters. She made me believe she was someone else. Towards the end of the film, Thursday and Monday confront each other in the restroom and I was very impressed with the way Noomi is reacting with herself.
The Settman sisters hate being trapped inside an apartment and they want to have a life of their own instead of impersonating one person. Monday is the only one who takes what they do seriously even though she hates it. She feels she does the most work out of her siblings. Tuesday is almost like the hippie type. She smokes dope and is like “what ever”. Wednesday is a sports fan and athletic tomboyish type. Thursday is tomboyish as well and hates posing as Karen once a week. Friday is the computer expert and has bad social skills. Saturday never goes to work she always has to take clients out for drinks and is the seductive type. And then Sunday is the mother figure of them all and always cooks dinner and takes care of them.
The producers of “What Happened to Monday?" looked so hard to find the right director for this project, but they had no luck until they met Tommy Wirkola. Tommy loved everything about the script except he wanted to make one change and that was make the siblings female because they were all male at first. Other than that he was interested the world it took place in, the style of that world and the idea that siblings are illegal. The screenwriters decided to rewrite the script for “What Happened to Monday?” after Tommy and them met Noomi Rapace. Noomi loved the concept of the film and had goosebumps as she was reading the script.
They hired doubles for Noomi to interact in scenes with. They would be in the shot with Noomi and then they would shoot it again only Noomi would be in a different position playing one of the other characters that the double was playing before. The visual effects department would later add more than one Noomi Rapace in the same shot. This project was the most challenging thing Noomi Rapace has ever done in her career playing seven characters and being in multiple spots.
Noomi Rapace is a physical person and she did most of her own stunts. There’s a fight sequence that has five of the Settman sisters fighting three assassins who come into their apartment to kill them. They fight them one by one in their own way. Each one has a certain skill. Tommy wanted it to be believable that these sisters can take down three assassins in their own way.
William Dafoe plays the grandfather of the Settman sisters. His daughter died giving birth to seven girls and it was his responsibility to take care of them and hide them from the world so they could stay safe. He did a good job keeping them a secret all these years even after death until the Child Allocation Bureau became aware of them.
It was a little bit of a shock for me to find out that Monday portrayed her own siblings by informing the Child Allocation Bureau. But she did it because she was sick and tired of pretending to be someone she is not. She fell in love with a man named Adrian Knowles, who works at the Child Allocation Burean, and wanted to have a life with him. Adrian Knowles is not a bad guy or a portrayer. At first you don’t know what Adrain is when he shows up at the Settman sisters' apartment to see Karen. As the movie goes on you learn that he was just someone who is madly in love with Monday, even though he didn’t know who she really was or knew that she was a sibling to six other girls. He wasn’t even aware that the Child Allocation Bureau was killing children who are siblings. He was more of a security guard at the front of the building. I’m glad he was on the good side because the Settman sisters needed someone like him.
I hate the assassins, Joe and Zaquia, who work for the Child Allocation Bureau. Glad that Adrian was able to kill them both. First he broke Zaquia’s arm, then pointed the gun she is holding at her head and fires. And then he just shoots Joe. Like I said, Thursday never liked pretending to be someone she is not because she wants to be her own person just like the rest of her sisters. But towards the end, Thursday puts Karen Settman to good use and that is going undercover to help take down the company.
I hated that a lot of the sisters had to die. I thought maybe at least four would make it after seeing them in tears over the loss of their sister, Sunday. Then after Wednesday was shot in the head by Joe and fell off a tall building, my thoughts were either two or one of the sisters are going to make it in the end. I’m happy enough that more than one sister survived at the end. I thought Tuesday was dead at first, but turns out she was just being held captive by the Child Allocation Bureau. Tuesday had her eye pulled out by the Child Allocation Bureau when they first became aware of the Settman sisters, but she got a robotic one in the end. Tuesday and Thursday have Adrien on their side and all three of them have successfully exposed the Child Allocation Burean to the public of what it really is.
My rating on “What Happened to Monday?” is four and half out of five stars.
