Noomi Rapace plays seven people in What Happened to Monday, and the film never finds a reason for her to play more than two. The 2017 science-fiction action film, directed by Tommy Wirkola and written by Max Botkin and Kerry Williamson, sets up a world of enforced one-child families and then spends most of its 123 minutes on a chase. The premise is the best thing in it. The rest is running.
Trailer, via Still Watching Netflix.
Seven Sisters, One Karen Settman
The setting is a dystopian 2073. Overpopulation has produced a strict one-child policy, enforced by the European Federation’s Child Allocation Bureau. Illegal children found by the C.A.B. are taken and placed in indefinite cryosleep. Terrence Settman, played by Willem Dafoe, loses his daughter during childbirth and secretly raises her identical septuplet daughters.
He names each girl after a day of the week. He trains them to live one shared life under a single identity, “Karen Settman.” Each sister goes outside only on the day matching her name. The tagline says it plainly: “Seven sisters. One identity.”
That is a clean machine for a thriller. Seven women, one face, one apartment, one job. The film knows it. What Happened to Monday keeps the rules tidy for about an hour, then starts breaking its own toy.
Monday Does Not Come Home
The engine turns when Monday fails to return home after work. Tuesday retraces her steps and learns Monday got the promotion the sisters were up for and met their co-worker Jerry at a bar. Before Tuesday can dig further, C.A.B. agents detain her.
At the C.A.B. facility she meets Nicolette Cayman, the head of the bureau and a presidential candidate, played by Glenn Close. Cayman says she knows the sisters exist. She sends agents to the apartment to eliminate them. The sisters kill the agents. Sunday dies in the fight.
The agents got in using Tuesday’s severed eyeball to beat the building’s retinal scan. The sisters suspect Jerry talked. Wednesday goes out without a disguise and confronts him. Jerry says “Karen” won the promotion after moving millions of euros to Cayman to fund her campaign. A C.A.B. sniper kills Jerry. Wednesday runs.
That is a lot of plot, and the film treats it as a lot of plot. Every revelation arrives with a body attached. The paranoid logic of the setup — one slip, one sister, and the whole life collapses — is real. What Happened to Monday mostly uses it as an excuse to move Rapace from room to room.
A Cast Doing Less Than It Could
Close gets the film’s one clean villain turn. Cayman is a true believer with a campaign to fund, and Close plays her without a wink. Dafoe has maybe fifteen minutes of screen time as Terrence and makes them count. Marwan Kenzari plays Adrian Knowles, a C.A.B. security guard and Monday’s love interest, and the film never decides how much that matters.
Then there is Rapace. She is the whole movie. Seven sisters, one actress, and the script gives her maybe three distinct people. Monday is the responsible one. Tuesday is the detective. Wednesday is the one who breaks the rules. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday exist mostly to be counted.
That is not a performance problem. It is a writing problem. If the film wants us to feel the loss of Sunday, it has to make Sunday a person first. It does not.
The Schedule the Film Cannot Keep
The film’s central mechanic is a schedule. Here is the running order the sisters live by, and the order in which What Happened to Monday spends it:
| Day | Sister’s job in the story | What the film does with her |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Works the shared job, disappears | The inciting event |
| Tuesday | Retraces Monday, gets detained | Carries the investigation |
| Wednesday | Confronts Jerry, flees | Carries the action |
| Thursday | Shares the apartment | Background |
| Friday | Shares the apartment | Background |
| Saturday | Shares the apartment | Background |
| Sunday | Killed by C.A.B. agents | Dies before we know her |
The table is the movie. A premise built on seven distinct lives produces three characters and four names. The film wants the audience to mourn a sister it never introduced.
What the Film Gets Right
The world-building is spare and effective. The C.A.B. is not a cartoon. The cryosleep is not explained to death. The one-child policy is stated once and then trusted to do its work. Wirkola keeps the action clean, and the apartment — one home stretched across seven women — is a good idea the film underuses.
The film was released theatrically in Europe and Asia. Netflix handled the United States, United Kingdom and Latin America on August 18, 2017. It drew mixed reviews.
That split makes sense. What Happened to Monday is a good short film stretched to 123 minutes. The first act promises a tense, clever, closed-loop thriller about identity and surveillance. The third act delivers a standard revenge run with a body count.
The wasted resource is Rapace. She is doing the hardest job in the film — seven roles, one face, one wardrobe — and the script hands her a checklist instead of seven people. A better version of this movie would have spent its first hour making us love all seven sisters before it killed one. This one spends its first hour explaining the rules.
What Happened to Monday is worth watching for the premise and for Close. It is not worth watching for the payoff. The film’s own tagline is a promise it cannot keep: seven sisters, one identity, and only three of them ever get to be anybody.
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