What Happened To Terrence

**Spoiler Warning**

Tommy Wirkola’s What Happened To Monday is an eerily possible dystopian film from August, 2017. The film addresses the threat of overpopulation in a world left crowded and hungry. To remedy this problem, the government creates the Child Allocation Act which dictates that only one child per family is allowed. The character Terrence Settman quietly works around this rule as he raises seven identical granddaughters, named after the days of the week. Since they are identical, the sisters learn to work together to live publicaly as a single individual, a woman named after their mother, Karen Settman. After the eldest sister, Monday, doesn’t return from their job, the sisters decide to work against the Child Allocation Bureau (C.A.B.) to find out what happened to her.


This film does a great job at a few key things that make the movie as a whole worth rewatching. The emotions conveyed throughout make the viewer empathise with the characters. The scene in which Thursday loses the tip of her finger may be one of the most intense. The graphic imagery paired with the fear and disappointment in Terrence’s expression creates tension. That tension grows as we watch the sister’s granddad prepare to amputate the tips of all of the girls’ fingers to match their rebellious sister. In order to maintain their secret, they must be exactly the same. In the final moments of the scene, Monday’s terror slap us in the face as she finally realized the implications of their illegal existence.


In scenes set in a public place, the frame is absolutely full of people. The viewer feels crowded and claustrophobic. Extras are everywhere, sometimes obstructing the view of the main character. Wirkola gives us a convincing window into our potential future.


Out of all these faces we see in the crowd, Noomi Rapace is one of them. But, more accurately, she is seven of them. Rapace shows off her skills as an actor as all of the Settman siblings. In a single film, she portrays a pothead, a computer whiz, a blonde bombshell, and four more. Each sister has her own unique personality despite being played by one person. The range of Noomi Rapace’s acting in this film alone is truly amazing.


Although the film has many technical strengths, the plot has issues that detract from the potential of the film. The holes don’t quite make the film swiss cheese, but a few points make us question the writers’ choices. The most obvious discontinuity is how that the seven sisters have a distinctly non-American accent as adults. Terrence, who raised them in seclusion, has an American accent. The strongest indicator of this plot hole is that the sisters as children sound just as American as their granddad, but Rapace does not conceal her accent when she plays them as adults.


Another unlikely situation is how easily Tuesday and Thursday revere their eldest sister, Monday, after her death, even though it was she who betrayed them to the government. In the space of a few seconds, they go from fighting to kill, to familiar tenderness for their dear sister. Though it is understandable to be at the side of a dying relative, the acting and directing made the scene unconvincing.


Some smaller plot holes exist, but the last obvious one is how Terrence Settman disappears from the film with no explanation. As the most influential figure in the girls’ lives, it is confusing why Wirkola chose not to show when and how Terrence left the septuplets lives. An appropriate subtitle might be What Happened to Terrence?


The film’s strengths make it worth watching. The flawed plot, however, prevents it from being an outstanding film.

What Happened to Democracy?

The Netflix original movie, What Happened to Monday, portrays a dystopian world where the government, to combat overpopulation, enacts a single child policy. The government supposedly freezes the children for a later age of prosperity, but Terrence Settman rebuts this and instead raises his seven identical granddaughters with a single identity. This Netflix original covers a wide variety of interesting ideas and topics, but what interested me the most was the portrayal of the European Federation and the Government structure imposed. In the movie’s first few minutes it explains how and why the one child policy, called the, “Child Allocation Act,” came into effect. It explains that Nicolette Cayman, a scientist, head of the Child Allocation Bureau (C.A.B.), and a candidate for parliament, created the legislation to ensure the prosperity of the human race. Throughout the movie, it is revealed that the government has reinforced military checkpoints and that the city that the Settman sisters live in has a strong military or police presence to find and apprehend non-first born children, or siblings. Many of these displays of government power would appear as critiques of authoritarian rule, but the character of Nicolette Cayman running for election proves that the government is actually some sort of democracy. This begs the question, why would people elect representatives that oppress citizens, break apart families, and use tremendous force to enact order? It is shown that many people are unhappy with the government early on in the movie, but yet the movie states that the one child policy has been enacted for an extended period of time (at least 30 years). On one hand the lack of change in government policy proves to be an intriguing premise. This shows that the government has oppressed the people to such a degree that while they may disagree with the major life changing policy, the people carry an apathy towards change. This could be due to propaganda, suppression of information, or countless other aspects. I personally think that the government was oppressing desenters and had a very successful misinformation campaign. This stems from the fact that throughout the movie we see a clip of film where a doctor tells the viewer that siblings are cryogenically frozen for a better tomorrow. We also see an elite military force try to kill the seven sisters with precision and accuracy that leads to the idea they may often perform similar operations. These observations would fit into the narrative of this dystopian world, but seem somewhat unrealistic. The other argument discussing the state of government, would argue that this is unrealistic. Having a government that is a democracy with this level of oppression and dislike from the populous seems very unlikely. In one of the film’s first scenes a child is shown being taken away from her parents and thrown into a van by C.A.B. agents. This is met with disapproval from the crowd. This along with the number of cases discussed where siblings must be found and dealt with leads me to believe that there is not large public support for this kind of policy. Common sense and an understanding of contemporary politics would dictate that disapproval at the level the movie suggests would lead to massive change in the other direction by some level of government. This, in fact, is even shown at the end of the movie. After some negative information comes out about the process of enforcing the one child policy, the government quickly overturns the policy. The outrage grew, of course, due to the information but was already at extremely high levels beforehand. It is hard to believe that a government would go from no action to full repeal on a policy never well liked or received. Overall the portrayal of the government in What Happened to Monday? was foggy. I believe it was an interesting, albeit unrealistic, portrayal of a dystopian democracy trying to ensure the future for its citizens. This being said I think the movie should have pursued a route where public approval for the one child act was higher, or allowed for a government that was either non-democratic or was democratic in name only. This would have, in my opinion, allowed for stronger world building and helped the story with some of its most glaring plot holes.

Dystopia?

Dystopia. The opposite of a utopia. What makes those frightening for me at this point in my life is that a lot of those stories have a chance to happen depending on what choices we as people cause. Having had experiences that I don’t usually share with people, and maybe you don’t even know, gives me a kind of glass half empty outlook on life. What happened to Monday? Is a movie with that kind of outlook. This movie was premiered on Netflix in August in France.

I want to look at the plot and how it fits a dystopian outlook. Dystopian novels are classified as, “a genre of fiction writing used to explore social and political structures in a dark, nightmare world.” (Booker, “Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide”) When explained in high school my teacher used the most widely used definition: the opposite of a utopia. So instead of finding a story with shoed everything we wanted out of this world, instead of finding the American dream, I found a movie about despair and what could happen based on poor decisions or better yet on decisions made for me, not by me.

In What happened to Monday? the world’s population has grown and is continuing to grow exponentially, weaning the world of our resources. The more people on the earth meant more mouths to feed, but the amount of crops weren’t growing. So they genetically engineered them. That enhancement also affected the people eating them though; whatever they did to the crops made it so nearly every woman only got pregnant with multiple births. Doesn’t help their cause right? So how they continue to deal with the overpopulation is to do what China has had from 1979 to today and according to them will continue in the future: a one child law. You had to choose which of your children you would keep because you could only have one, and the families were told that their other children are being cryogenically frozen until a time comes when they can live freely on their world.

Spoiler. They lied. The main characters’ grandfather decides to keep all seven of his identical granddaughters and name them each after a day of the week, and that is the only day they are allowed out of the house, unless they want to be killed. They all live one life, with one name on their day. Only in their home could they be themselves, and as assumed by the title one day Monday doesn’t come back.

Just from that description I would say that this movie classifies as a dystopian film. This film explores a political and social construct currently in use in one part of the world. It takes this idea and shows what could happen if we continue in that route, but in a dark and almost sinister light. The morals shown in this movie are what make dystopian novels so compelling. No one who would watch What happened to Monday?  Would think that this movie ends like a fairytale romance.  This type of movie or book is made to make you think about humanity and where we are headed. Is that world somewhere I would want to live? How would we go about fixing that kind of world? I personally liked What happened to Monday?, but if you know me, you know I love dystopian things.