If earth ever became too overpopulated, how do you think we’d survive? This is the shocking reality for our main characters in What Happened to Monday. I remember when I first came across this movie’s trailer. I was fascinated and intrigued by the sneak peek it gave to the stories plot. After I watch it, it was evident this movie wasn’t short on suspense. It’s jam-packed with thrilling moments that will leave you emotionally attached to each character in the little span of an hour and a half.

The plot takes place in 2073, after the major human population growth in 2043 and the passing of the One Child Act. This act made it so families must hand over all but their eldest child to the Child Allocation Bureau. The Bureau would then put the children into machines called Cryosleeps. In these machines, the children are put into a deep sleep and kept there until the world could handle the extra mouths.

During this time, identical septuplet sisters are born and their grandfather names them after each day of the week. After training them all to take on the single identity of Karen Settmen, each girl is allowed to leave the house on their day of the week. The girls are hidden from society until the present time in the movie, 30 years later. The viewer then follows the hardships each sister is faced with to survive.

Actors like Willem Dafoe who played Terrence Settman, Glenn Close performing as the malicious Nicolette Cayman, and Noomi Rapace starring as the main roles of the septuplet sister’s are a few faces in this amazing cast. The movie’s effects were more than glamorous, each moment filling me with suspense. Things like massive explosions and the holographic screens created a  picture of a futuristic world.

My favorite special effect has to be how one person played all of the sisters. It blows my mind technology has come so far along that only after a few tweaks of a screen, someone can make two different videos of the same person interact together. There were scenes as simple as Thursday holding Fridays hand or the brawl Monday and Thursday partake in. While in the movie these seven sisters are real, in our world there played by only one person.

The featured sub-story in this movie was the broken relationship between Monday and Thursday. From the moment Terrence, their grandfather introduced to the sisters their fake identity, Monday and Thursday formulated their own connection to Karen Settman. For Thursday, it was the personality she never wanted to be, but Monday it was the identity she thought best fit her. This is shown in several flashbacks in the movie. In one, Terrence explains for the first time how this identity will allow them to leave the house. At the end of the explanation, Terrence tells Thursday she’ll be the first one to use it. The following day, outside the schoolhouse, Terrence tells Thursday before she enters the school grounds, “Remember, you are the one and only Karen Settman.”

In Monday’s, the lesson that ‘whatever happens to one of them, must happen to them all’ is enforced by Terrence after Thursday severely damages her pointer finger. Because of her carelessness, all of Thursday’s sisters must have their pointed fingers cut off to match her own injury. Monday is the first one up and Terrence positions the blade over her finger. Before cutting, the lock eyes and he tells her, “Monday, I need you to set an example for your sisters.” The viewer then sees how those words stick to Monday. She feels as those she is the one carrying all her sisters, and to do that effectively, she molds herself into the perfect image of Karen Settman.

To conclude, this movie is worth seeing because there aren’t many dystopian science fiction films like this out there. Every moment is a thrill ride as you emotionally invest yourself in the lives of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The passion to live becomes the viewers’ and the movies devastating conclusion will leave you craving to watch it one more time.