Under a strict implementation of the one-child policy, an identical-septuplet sisters hid under the government's eye until a twisted turn of events happened after one of them mysteriously disappeared.
Overpopulation has been one of the many factors that causes poverty, insufficient supplies, and even smaller mortality rate. One particular country that was evidently affected by this was China and this leads them to implement the One-Child Policy, where every family is only allowed to have one child.
This very specific problem became the main theme of 2017's Netflix movie,
What Happened To Monday.
The story follows a family of identical-septuplet sisters (Noomi Rapace), who grew up in a dystopian world where government only allows one child to live in every family. If a family has more than one child, the government takes all but the eldest, into their custody, and will be put under cryogenic sleep. Karen Settman, the mother of the septuplets, died while giving birth to them. Their grandfather, Terrence Settman (Willem Dafoe) decided to take the children under his care, named each of them as every day of the week, and live as one person on the public's eye, using the name of their mother. Each child is allowed to go out once per week, to protect them from government's brutal punishment.
For years and years, they were trained to have a common knowledge, looking exactly like a single person whenever they go to school or just wish to go out. They grew up to be a successful bank manager but that one fateful day, one of them didn't go back home and mysteriously disappeared. Now, each of them must investigate and retrace their sisters whereabouts to find out what happened to Monday.
The Good
I have to give props to Noomi Rapace for pulling off such an amazing performance of not one, but seven unique individuals. She's charming, very likable and badass at the same time. I like that she managed to give each character an individual, nuanced trait which totally works as I can easily identify who is what. The action sequences were thrilling and exciting to watch. The bloody and graphic tone, mixed with familial drama is quite a powerful balance that makes it more and more interesting. The score is quite good as well as it energizes the high-stakes, action-packed sequences.
The Bad
In exchange of giving action-madness, I thought the film didn't quite expanded upon the topic of overpopulation and government brutality as they would hoped to be. I also thought the film would work better in an episodal setting, so they could have more time to focus on each sister and discuss all these topics to give the film a deeper level of narrative. It also suffers from generic movie cliche as the story progressed, and admittedly, becomes obviously predictable in some parts.
Should You Watch It?
While I had fun watching it, What Happened to Monday is honestly just a passively enjoyable time-waster flick. It's brutal, it's violent, and purely-entertaining, silly madness with mediocre development to boot. Overall it was just okay.
7/10
Reel Points
Comments
Post a Comment