What Happened to Monday? (Seven Sisters)
U.K./France/Belgium/U.S.A. 2017

Opening 12 Oct 2017

Directed by: Tommy Wirkola
Writing credits: Max Botkin, Kerry Williamson
Principal actors: Noomi Rapace, Glenn Close, Willem Dafoe

In the year 2058 the world has become so overcrowded that a one-child policy is implemented. Any siblings are taken away by the Child Allocation Bureau, CAB, and are said to be frozen until one day the situation on earth allows them to be awakened.

In this near future dystopia, a woman gives birth to identical septuplets. With the mother not surviving the birth, the grandfather (Dafoe) decides to raise the seven sisters, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, hidden but with the chance to go out in public one day a week, the day of their name. Together all seven are raised to take on the identity of only one person.

Thirty years later, Karen Settman (Rapace) has become a successful businesswoman in a big bank and as she is about to be promoted, Monday does not return home from work.

What happened to Monday? The sisters have no other choice than to send Tuesday out the next day trying to find Monday. When the sisters lose contact to Tuesday the following day as well, they must fear they were found out. Seven siblings grown to be 30 years would be bad publicity in the election year for Nicolette Cayman (Close), the director of the Child Allocation Bureau. Is it all that simple?

When hitmen turn up in their hide out, each sister finds herself on the run for her life. On the search to find out who is after them and where the missing sisters have vanished, CAB agent Adrian (Marwan Kenzari) turns up and appears not only to know Karen, but also to have a relationship with her. The sisters then realize, the enemy may be closer than they suspected.

This brilliant action thriller makes the viewer wonder until the very end about the real cause for the sister’s sudden discovery. Not once did I suspect the final plot twist. A brilliant role for Noomi Rapace who gave each of the seven sisters her own character. It is debatable if the full potential of the theme was played out in this movie. At the end of the movie, still mesmerized by the surprising finale, it appears that a bit more society criticism would have added even more value to this movie. In the USA and UK this movie is available for streaming on Netflix as a Netflix Original. If you can’t make it to your home country this fall, make sure to catch this film in the German theater. This is my fall must-see of 2017. (Karen Eve Malinowski O’Shaughnessy)