What haPPeneD tO mOnDaY

Sister Act

released 18 aUGUsT 2017 | sVOd

Director Tommy Wirkola Cast Noomi rapace, Glenn Close, Willem dafoe, Marwan Kenzari

Remember how, in the late ’90s and early ’00s, one of Hollywood’s main excuses for getting sci-fi ideas onto the big screen was to bolt them onto an action movie chassis? What Happened To Monday feels like a throwback to the era of Paycheck, Equilibrium and The Sixth Day – though, to be fair, it’s a rather better film than most of its forebears.

The year is 2073 and massive over-population has led to a strict one-child policy – any additional siblings are rounded up by the Child Allocation Bureau and put into stasis until the world is fixed. It’s not a good time to be a septuplet, then, so Willem Dafoe puts his seven granddaughters into hiding, names them after days of the week, and gives each a day in the real world as the made-up Karen Settman. It’s a plan that works perfectly until the eponymous Monday doesn’t come home one night…

While an ingenious premise and exemplary world building (some of the ramifications of this future world are genuinely chilling) sometimes get lost beneath a succession of impressively choreographed fight scenes, the film’s more than carried by seven Noomi Rapaces. With the help of different wigs and outfits, and some flawless special effects wizardry, the Prometheus star manages to give seven identical sisters distinct, recognisable personalities – to the point that, if you didn’t know better, you’d believe they were played by different actors. Indeed, if the story’s themes had been explored with more brains than brawn, this could have been something special. Richard Edwards

The script originally had seven brothers, but when the director met the producers he pitched Rapace as the lead.