Post by Chalice_Of_Evil on Jun 1, 2018 22:10:25 GMT
After first seeing the trailer for Noomi Rapace's movie What Happened to Monday, I was super eager to watch it as it looked like the show Orphan Black (where one actress, Tatiana Maslany, played umpteen characters - all clones) with Noomi Rapace in it! That alone sold me on it. Unfortunately, the movie was never released here in theatres (at least not to my knowledge) and so I had to wait for it to come out on DVD (annoyingly, there's been no Blu-ray release here). I got the movie yesterday and watched it last night.
When the movie begins, we quickly learn that overpopulation is indeed a 'thing' and that in this futuristic world, everyone is forced to only have one child and no more thanks to Glenn Close's Nicolette Cayman. Any siblings are taken and put into 'cryosleep' until a solution for the overpopulation problem is solved. Of course, Willem Dafoe's Terrence Settman is grandfather to seven children - all identical septuplets (so, not clones like I'd originally assumed the film was going to be about, which separates this it from Orphan Black straight away, as siblings and clones are two different things. The clones from OB eventually became like siblings to each other, whereas here they're already biologically siblings...though naturally they don't all get along). When asked about names, Terrence has the idea to name them each after the days of the week.
Through flashbacks we see that Terrence encourages the sisters to show their individuality in the way they express themselves, dress, etc. They're cooped up and itching to get outside. When Terrence eventually decides to let them, he sets some rules: each one of them will get to go out on the day they're named after - so Monday gets to go out on Monday, Tuesday on Tuesday and so forth. When they do go out, they cannot tell anyone they're a sibling (obviously) and they'll all assume the same single identity of Karen Settman (named after their mother), where they will look, dress and act like the same person.
They have a futuristic mirror (which keeps track of every detail of their appearance when they return from going out so that they can match the look when it's their turn) and end-of-day meetings where the sibling who got to go out fills the rest in on everything that happened. They also have a routine they implement whenever someone stops by their residence (where they all hide and pack up their beds/all signs of there being siblings living there).
We get to see just how important it is that they maintain this ruse of there only being 'one' Karen Settman via flashbacks which show that when one of the siblings (Thursday) sneaked out to go skateboarding (while one of the others was already outside) and injured herself (taking off the tip of her finger), then ALL the others had to pay the price - involving Terrence cutting off each one's finger tip with a meat cleaver. Monday, who was the unlucky one to go first, is told by Terrence to be brave and set an example for her sisters as Thursday looks on with tear-filled eyes, witnessing the the full weight/consequences of her actions.
Meanwhile, in the 'present', Monday ventures out on her day...but doesn't return.
The siblings start to worry and they send out Tuesday - who unfortunately gets captured (I felt sorry for her, as she was so reluctant to go and would've probably much rather stayed at home to eat pot brownies, letting one of her sisters go in her place...but she was just the unlucky one who was next in line).
It's not looking good for her when guys break into the place using an eyeball (which the siblings later verify is Tuesday's) and there's a fight which ensues between the guys and the girls - with rather bloody results. While most, if not all, the siblings are able to at least put up somewhat of a fight (it might surprise some to see Saturday is quite scrappy and can hold her own...at least for a bit), it's clear that Wednesday (who we've seen working out) is the 'fighter' among the sisters. Though it looks like she's done for at one point, I love the way she ends up taking care of this jerk (I actually said "Yes!"...or it might've been "HA!" when she finally ended him).
Sadly, though, they lose Sunday (her "I don't know what I believe."/I don't know who I am." is especially sad, as is the siblings' reaction to her death).
One of the things that stood out about this movie to me was how quickly I grew attached to the characters. Noomi Rapace doesn't have multiple seasons to develop these seven sisters and each of their personalities, dynamics with the others, their little quirks and everything else. She has a 2 hr 4 min movie and so it might feel like some of the sisters don't get much 'development' at all - but I personally would've loved to spend more than one movie with them. I was just starting to get a 'feel' for each of them when suddenly they were broken up and started getting killed off - much to my sadness, as I hate seeing any character played by Noomi killed off (and she does such an amazing job playing the siblings reacting to the deaths of each other too). When Noomi cries/expresses anguish, she makes me feel it too. Her voice cracks and it's just so heartbreaking.
After this^ loss they try to formulate a plan and one by one we lose more of them. I think the most upsetting for me was Wednesday, as she puts up such a fight and lasts so long...but is undone by a death-defying jump from the top of one building to another. If she'd only held off slightly longer, she may have stopped running/jumping before the guys after her burst through the door atop the other building and shot at her. She'd managed to do such a good job running from them (and with supposed computer nerd, Friday, not being of much help - like telling her the best exit is the front door...except it's not, as there's guys there, cutting off communication with Wednesday when she needs her help, telling her to jump down into a dumpster...forgetting that it's been emptied. Friday just generally doesn't seem to be that great at helping her sister evade capture and an ultimately death). The fact that Wednesday still manages to grab the ledge of the other building after being shot midair just shows how awesome she is, but sadly she's left helpless and gets shot again in the head when she's completely vulnerable and can't do a thing to stop it, plummeting to the ground far down below.
Poor Saturday doesn't have it much better, as she's never 'been' with anyone (in the biblical sense) and it's only after she does get with a guy (who it turns out Monday had also gotten involved with and apparently loved her) that she is caught unawares by goons and shot in the back of the head as she turns to tell her sisters (over the computer) that she loves them...but is, sadly, cut off mid-sentence.
That's a pretty upsetting ending too. Friday doesn't make it either, as she stays back to set off an explosion and Thursday watches on in horror. Friday wasn't exactly my favourite of the siblings...but she redeemed yourself in the end (I'm still not sure how necessary it was for her to die, but her reasoning for sacrificing herself was that she couldn't manage without her siblings/couldn't survive out in the world...or something).
What's especially infuriating is that not many of the guys after the siblings bite the dust in the explosion (I spent the whole movie wanting those killers to meet grisly demises, and it's only towards the end that they die...and, annoyingly, not nearly as gruesomely/satisfyingly as I would've liked). The movie does a good job of making me be entirely on the sisters' side and wanting their pursuers dead.
Thursday teams up with the guy who Monday was seeing (and who unknowingly slept with Saturday, thinking she was Monday - all the time not knowing anything about there being seven sisters...though he's quickly brought up to speed by Thursday post-explosion) and they go to the place where they think Monday is being held, but instead find Tuesday alive (though minus an eye) and that Monday is in fact working with Cayman, having made a deal with her and sold out her sisters. Thursday adopts the Karen Settman look and confronts Monday (this is after having discovered that the siblings who got taken away from families that had more than one child were in fact incinerated rather than frozen - it's quite satisfying when the woman who incinerates the kids gets a taste of her own medicine). A fight ensues and Monday seemingly loses, as Thursday emerges to confront Cayman (who has just been revealed for the mass murderer she is in front of everyone).
Monday still lives...though not for long, as she gets fatally shot. Both Thursday and the guy Monday was seeing get to spend precious little time with Monday before she dies. It's also revealed that she's pregnant. The movie ends with only Thursday (who has permanently adopted the Karen Settman alias) and Tuesday (who now goes by the name Terry and has gotten a new eye) alive and them looking on at the fetuses' of Monday's children.
Firstly, I must say that I actually really quite enjoyed this movie. I was never 'bored' by it. Even before all the action started, I was fascinated by these seven sisters and their relationships with each other. I could've spent a good solid hour just getting to know each of them and their different dynamics/quirks/senses of humour/likes/dislikes and many more things (it’s a shame so many of them died, as I feel there could’ve been multiple movies’ worth of characterization we could’ve explored). While we didn't get to spend much time getting to know each sibling, I felt like I got to know at least a bit about each of them and Noomi Rapace did a phenomenal job quickly establishing the differences between the seven of them and making them feel like ‘whole’ characters.
I especially liked that they had a sense of humour between them and that there were some understated amusing moments (not in-your-face 'humour' that clobbers you over the head trying to be ‘funny’ like so many movies now seem to. They feel as though they can’t go five minutes without cracking some ‘joke’, whereas this movie makes the little bits of humour work because they’re not so ‘obvious’ and they come at unexpected moments).
I felt much more for these seven sisters than I do for a lot of the ‘popular’ characters in movies/movie franchises these days. Why are we stuck with seeing characters in movie after movie who’ve become so stale, yet these characters who had such a richness to them are ones we spend so little time with? I think the main disappointment with the film would be all that untapped potential with the siblings’ dynamics that we’ll never get to see.
I know some people will probably think of Glenn Close’s character as the ‘hero’ of the story in that she was trying to ‘save’ everyone by keeping the population down, but she went about it in the completely wrong way. At one point she gives one of the siblings a lecture on how much food and water she and her sisters would’ve taken from others...but my counter argument would be that the sisters were good people, whereas some of the scum on the street could’ve gone into that incineration chamber and they would’ve actually deserved it, rather than killing people who never hurt anyone.
Thanks to Orphan Black, the effects/tricks they mastered in that show for creating multiple versions of the same person together in a scene are probably taken for granted now, but this movie manages to use it in new/different ways with the siblings – such as the fight between several of them and the guys who storm in, trying to kill them. It’s easy to forget just how technically difficult all this stuff would be to achieve. Even the non-action parts would be very time-consuming, and like Tatiana Maslany, Noomi Rapace deserves heaps of credit for the endurance it would take to film all this (plus, she apparently did most of her own stunts). When I watched 'The Making of' featurette in the DVD extras, Noomi was described by others as ‘fearless’ – and I’d agree with that description, as she seems up for anything. I think that’s at least part of the reason why she’s one of my favourite actresses.
Some may compare this movie and the sibling characters to Orphan Black and the clones, but it's important to remember that not only did some of those clones have different accents and extremely different personalities, but as mentioned at the start of my review, Tatiana Maslany (who is in a league of her own as far as TV actresses are concerned - she's THAT amazing) had five whole seasons to develop her various characters. Noomi had a far shorter space of time and was working with characters who didn't really sound that different and who only looked a bit different to each other. I think she worked a lot of nuance in there that might've been missed by people. Her characters aren't so 'obvious' in their differences, but they are indeed all different. I'm not trying to praise one at the expense of another. Both actresses deserve awards and it's criminal how this movie hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves. If the film had been marketed as some big action blockbuster and had some 'A-list' actress, then I think it'd be getting all the praise/awards, but because it has flown under the radar, it's gone largely unnoticed/underappreciated.
I will definitely be watching this film again in the future, I enjoyed it so much (except for siblings' deaths - those parts weren't so fun). But, on the whole, this movie is about family and it was actually very effective in showing the importance of that.
Through flashbacks we see that Terrence encourages the sisters to show their individuality in the way they express themselves, dress, etc. They're cooped up and itching to get outside. When Terrence eventually decides to let them, he sets some rules: each one of them will get to go out on the day they're named after - so Monday gets to go out on Monday, Tuesday on Tuesday and so forth. When they do go out, they cannot tell anyone they're a sibling (obviously) and they'll all assume the same single identity of Karen Settman (named after their mother), where they will look, dress and act like the same person.
They have a futuristic mirror (which keeps track of every detail of their appearance when they return from going out so that they can match the look when it's their turn) and end-of-day meetings where the sibling who got to go out fills the rest in on everything that happened. They also have a routine they implement whenever someone stops by their residence (where they all hide and pack up their beds/all signs of there being siblings living there).
We get to see just how important it is that they maintain this ruse of there only being 'one' Karen Settman via flashbacks which show that when one of the siblings (Thursday) sneaked out to go skateboarding (while one of the others was already outside) and injured herself (taking off the tip of her finger), then ALL the others had to pay the price - involving Terrence cutting off each one's finger tip with a meat cleaver. Monday, who was the unlucky one to go first, is told by Terrence to be brave and set an example for her sisters as Thursday looks on with tear-filled eyes, witnessing the the full weight/consequences of her actions.
Meanwhile, in the 'present', Monday ventures out on her day...but doesn't return.
The siblings start to worry and they send out Tuesday - who unfortunately gets captured (I felt sorry for her, as she was so reluctant to go and would've probably much rather stayed at home to eat pot brownies, letting one of her sisters go in her place...but she was just the unlucky one who was next in line).
It's not looking good for her when guys break into the place using an eyeball (which the siblings later verify is Tuesday's) and there's a fight which ensues between the guys and the girls - with rather bloody results. While most, if not all, the siblings are able to at least put up somewhat of a fight (it might surprise some to see Saturday is quite scrappy and can hold her own...at least for a bit), it's clear that Wednesday (who we've seen working out) is the 'fighter' among the sisters. Though it looks like she's done for at one point, I love the way she ends up taking care of this jerk (I actually said "Yes!"...or it might've been "HA!" when she finally ended him).
Sadly, though, they lose Sunday (her "I don't know what I believe."/I don't know who I am." is especially sad, as is the siblings' reaction to her death).
One of the things that stood out about this movie to me was how quickly I grew attached to the characters. Noomi Rapace doesn't have multiple seasons to develop these seven sisters and each of their personalities, dynamics with the others, their little quirks and everything else. She has a 2 hr 4 min movie and so it might feel like some of the sisters don't get much 'development' at all - but I personally would've loved to spend more than one movie with them. I was just starting to get a 'feel' for each of them when suddenly they were broken up and started getting killed off - much to my sadness, as I hate seeing any character played by Noomi killed off (and she does such an amazing job playing the siblings reacting to the deaths of each other too). When Noomi cries/expresses anguish, she makes me feel it too. Her voice cracks and it's just so heartbreaking.
After this^ loss they try to formulate a plan and one by one we lose more of them. I think the most upsetting for me was Wednesday, as she puts up such a fight and lasts so long...but is undone by a death-defying jump from the top of one building to another. If she'd only held off slightly longer, she may have stopped running/jumping before the guys after her burst through the door atop the other building and shot at her. She'd managed to do such a good job running from them (and with supposed computer nerd, Friday, not being of much help - like telling her the best exit is the front door...except it's not, as there's guys there, cutting off communication with Wednesday when she needs her help, telling her to jump down into a dumpster...forgetting that it's been emptied. Friday just generally doesn't seem to be that great at helping her sister evade capture and an ultimately death). The fact that Wednesday still manages to grab the ledge of the other building after being shot midair just shows how awesome she is, but sadly she's left helpless and gets shot again in the head when she's completely vulnerable and can't do a thing to stop it, plummeting to the ground far down below.
Poor Saturday doesn't have it much better, as she's never 'been' with anyone (in the biblical sense) and it's only after she does get with a guy (who it turns out Monday had also gotten involved with and apparently loved her) that she is caught unawares by goons and shot in the back of the head as she turns to tell her sisters (over the computer) that she loves them...but is, sadly, cut off mid-sentence.
That's a pretty upsetting ending too. Friday doesn't make it either, as she stays back to set off an explosion and Thursday watches on in horror. Friday wasn't exactly my favourite of the siblings...but she redeemed yourself in the end (I'm still not sure how necessary it was for her to die, but her reasoning for sacrificing herself was that she couldn't manage without her siblings/couldn't survive out in the world...or something).
What's especially infuriating is that not many of the guys after the siblings bite the dust in the explosion (I spent the whole movie wanting those killers to meet grisly demises, and it's only towards the end that they die...and, annoyingly, not nearly as gruesomely/satisfyingly as I would've liked). The movie does a good job of making me be entirely on the sisters' side and wanting their pursuers dead.
Thursday teams up with the guy who Monday was seeing (and who unknowingly slept with Saturday, thinking she was Monday - all the time not knowing anything about there being seven sisters...though he's quickly brought up to speed by Thursday post-explosion) and they go to the place where they think Monday is being held, but instead find Tuesday alive (though minus an eye) and that Monday is in fact working with Cayman, having made a deal with her and sold out her sisters. Thursday adopts the Karen Settman look and confronts Monday (this is after having discovered that the siblings who got taken away from families that had more than one child were in fact incinerated rather than frozen - it's quite satisfying when the woman who incinerates the kids gets a taste of her own medicine). A fight ensues and Monday seemingly loses, as Thursday emerges to confront Cayman (who has just been revealed for the mass murderer she is in front of everyone).
Monday still lives...though not for long, as she gets fatally shot. Both Thursday and the guy Monday was seeing get to spend precious little time with Monday before she dies. It's also revealed that she's pregnant. The movie ends with only Thursday (who has permanently adopted the Karen Settman alias) and Tuesday (who now goes by the name Terry and has gotten a new eye) alive and them looking on at the fetuses' of Monday's children.
Firstly, I must say that I actually really quite enjoyed this movie. I was never 'bored' by it. Even before all the action started, I was fascinated by these seven sisters and their relationships with each other. I could've spent a good solid hour just getting to know each of them and their different dynamics/quirks/senses of humour/likes/dislikes and many more things (it’s a shame so many of them died, as I feel there could’ve been multiple movies’ worth of characterization we could’ve explored). While we didn't get to spend much time getting to know each sibling, I felt like I got to know at least a bit about each of them and Noomi Rapace did a phenomenal job quickly establishing the differences between the seven of them and making them feel like ‘whole’ characters.
I especially liked that they had a sense of humour between them and that there were some understated amusing moments (not in-your-face 'humour' that clobbers you over the head trying to be ‘funny’ like so many movies now seem to. They feel as though they can’t go five minutes without cracking some ‘joke’, whereas this movie makes the little bits of humour work because they’re not so ‘obvious’ and they come at unexpected moments).
I felt much more for these seven sisters than I do for a lot of the ‘popular’ characters in movies/movie franchises these days. Why are we stuck with seeing characters in movie after movie who’ve become so stale, yet these characters who had such a richness to them are ones we spend so little time with? I think the main disappointment with the film would be all that untapped potential with the siblings’ dynamics that we’ll never get to see.
I know some people will probably think of Glenn Close’s character as the ‘hero’ of the story in that she was trying to ‘save’ everyone by keeping the population down, but she went about it in the completely wrong way. At one point she gives one of the siblings a lecture on how much food and water she and her sisters would’ve taken from others...but my counter argument would be that the sisters were good people, whereas some of the scum on the street could’ve gone into that incineration chamber and they would’ve actually deserved it, rather than killing people who never hurt anyone.
Thanks to Orphan Black, the effects/tricks they mastered in that show for creating multiple versions of the same person together in a scene are probably taken for granted now, but this movie manages to use it in new/different ways with the siblings – such as the fight between several of them and the guys who storm in, trying to kill them. It’s easy to forget just how technically difficult all this stuff would be to achieve. Even the non-action parts would be very time-consuming, and like Tatiana Maslany, Noomi Rapace deserves heaps of credit for the endurance it would take to film all this (plus, she apparently did most of her own stunts). When I watched 'The Making of' featurette in the DVD extras, Noomi was described by others as ‘fearless’ – and I’d agree with that description, as she seems up for anything. I think that’s at least part of the reason why she’s one of my favourite actresses.
Some may compare this movie and the sibling characters to Orphan Black and the clones, but it's important to remember that not only did some of those clones have different accents and extremely different personalities, but as mentioned at the start of my review, Tatiana Maslany (who is in a league of her own as far as TV actresses are concerned - she's THAT amazing) had five whole seasons to develop her various characters. Noomi had a far shorter space of time and was working with characters who didn't really sound that different and who only looked a bit different to each other. I think she worked a lot of nuance in there that might've been missed by people. Her characters aren't so 'obvious' in their differences, but they are indeed all different. I'm not trying to praise one at the expense of another. Both actresses deserve awards and it's criminal how this movie hasn't gotten the recognition it deserves. If the film had been marketed as some big action blockbuster and had some 'A-list' actress, then I think it'd be getting all the praise/awards, but because it has flown under the radar, it's gone largely unnoticed/underappreciated.
I will definitely be watching this film again in the future, I enjoyed it so much (except for siblings' deaths - those parts weren't so fun). But, on the whole, this movie is about family and it was actually very effective in showing the importance of that.
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(Hey, when I applauded Mr. Herrmann's name when it appeared among the opening titles, I was far from alone. And yes, I do applaud/cheer/jeer at movies in a theater...so sue me. 
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