In Tommy Wirkola’s “What Happened to Monday,” we have, at hand, the world in 2073, which is spilling over the brink and looking for measures to contain the spill simultaneously. It is a dystopia and as is generally the norm with dystopian films, the film opens with a montage of news reports to position us into the world. With food shortage and overpopulation now more real than ever, the Child Allocation Bureau has come into effect with the aim of eliminating extra children from the family with immediate effect.
Politician Nicolette Cayman advocates for the Child Allocation Act, which would help restore the equilibrium between perpetually increasing consumers and depleting resources. It is here that we meet Karen Settman. However, the Karen Settman we are introduced to in the first scene is not the only Karen Settman we will remember. In fact, there are seven such Karens.
To find out about Karen’s secret, read on.
What Happened to Monday (2017) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Set in the future, where the human population has spun out of control, the world is fraught largely with one core issue: how to feed the entire population when climate change has taken over, and the entire agricultural system has crumbled down in the face of it. To feed the population, the superpowers have tinkered with nature and thought of genetically modified seeds, and the results have been bountiful. However, in the process, the dents caused in nature by these acts have exacerbated the population problem. Across the world, multiple births and genetic defects have been reported following the consumption of these manipulated seeds. What is at hand is now double-fold.
Dr. Nicolette Cayman, a political activist and conservation biologist, has advised the state on the adoption of the “one-child family policy,” the Child Allocation Act. The act has made it mandatory for all US citizens to wear an identity bracelet allocated by the Child Allocation Bureau based on an individual’s biometrics. The order issued by the Bureau demands that illegally conceived siblings be deported to cryosleep.
With such an alarming state as a backdrop, Terrence Settman tries to cover the birth of her granddaughters, who are born as septuplets. Their mother, Karen, has died giving birth to them. Each sister is named after a day of the week and can only leave the house on their respective day. To keep the C.A.B. at bay, Terrence tells them that, for the outside world, all of them should take on the singular identity of Karen Settman. Each of their lives should seem perfectly in tune with the life of the sister who spent the previous day outside as Karen.
Thirty years later, the sisters are still continuing the cycle and cautions taught to them by their grandfather. One night, after work, Monday becomes untraceable. The next day, it is Tuesday’s turn to be Karen, and she retraces Monday’s steps. In doing so, she finds out that Monday and her obnoxious colleague, Jerry, had a fight at a bar. Tuesday is picked up by C.A.B. officials and taken to the headquarters. At the headquarters, Tuesday comes face to face with Nicolette Cayman. Cayman vows to exterminate the other sisters.
The sisters witness the C.A.B. officials entering their building. The officials bring a severed eyeball of one of the two abducted sisters– however, it is not clear as to whose it might be– to bypass the retinal scan lock of their apartment. A bloody battle ensues between the five sisters, but Sunday succumbs to her injuries. The sisters later find out that the severed eye belongs to Tuesday. Wednesday is sent to find out what Jerry knows about Monday’s disappearance.
Jerry reveals that Monday had a funds transfer contract with Cayman, following which she got a promotion. Jerry got to know about this illicit transaction and made a pact with Karen to pass on the promotion to him in exchange for keeping his mouth shut. While Wednesday and Jerry talk inside his apartment, a C.A.B. sniper who has been aiming at Jerry from outside fires, and Jerry dies. Wednesday gains access to the contract and flees. However, a C.A.B. troop arrives, and Wednesday’s life is endangered.
The other sisters try to direct Wednesday to safety. At this time, Adrian, a C.A.B. security guard, arrives in search of Karen. Saturday engages with him, on the insistence of Thursday, to find out which of the sisters has been dating him. Friday takes out a coupling device from the bracelet of one of the dead C.A.B agents and inserts it into Saturday’s bracelets. Friday advises Saturday to activate her bracelet and connect it to Adrian’s in order to get a gateway to the Bureau’s servers. While sleeping with Adrian, Saturday surreptitiously links their bracelets, allowing the sisters to hack into the video surveillance system of the C.A.B. The sisters spot Monday cooped up in a cell.
On the other hand, after an intense cat-and-mouse chasing game between the C.A.B agents and Wednesday, Wednesday is killed. Saturday finds out that it is Monday, who has been dating Adrian for a while. When Adrian leaves, C.A.B. agents arrive and kill Saturday. The agents reach the sisters’ apartment simultaneously. While Thursday manages to take Friday outside and prepares to flee, Friday goes back, blows up the apartment, and sacrifices herself.
Adrian follows the alert and reaches the Settman’s apartment to find Friday gone. In the car, Thursday confronts him for selling them out. Adrian realizes that she is a sibling. Thursday asks Adrian to help in rescuing Monday. Adrian wheels Thursday, who pretends to be dead inside a body bag, into the Bureau on a stretcher. Thursday records a child being put into cryosleep. The child is first made to fall asleep using an injection and then incinerated despite not being dead. When it is Thusday’s turn, she kicks the nurse and pushes her into the cryosleep. Thursday and Adrian find Tuesday in the cell with an eye missing.
Cayman is running for Parliament. With only fifteen minutes left to Cayman’s speech, Thursday finds Monday and realizes it was her sister who busted their secret to Cayman. Monday, caustic from having the responsibility of the firstborn on her shoulders for all these years, confesses to betraying the siblings. Thursday and Monday fight. Subsequently, Monday accidentally gets shot.
After Cayman delivers her glossed-over speech on her work towards tackling overpopulation at her fundraising campaign, Tuesday and Adrian broadcast Thursday’s video footage of the cryosleep incineration. The video shocks the guests. This makes Cayman hysteric, and she confronts Thursday and pulls off her wig. Monday comes out of the washroom with a gun in hand. Joe, the head of security of C.A.B, shoots Monday, fearing she might shoot at Cayman. Joe, in turn, is killed by Adrian.
Before dying, Monday tells Thursday that she is pregnant. She asks her not to let the C.A.B. take her unborn twins. Thursday realizes that the desperation to protect her children has caused Monday to sacrifice her sisters. Following the events, rioting breaks out, demanding the repeal of the Child Allocation Act. Cayman faces the death penalty.
What Happened to Monday (2017) Movie Ending Explained:
Which of the sisters survives in the end?
Only Tuesday and Thursday survive in the end. The sisters and Adrian watch as Monday, and Adrian’s twins develop in an artificial womb. Tuesday has been given a new eye and takes on the name Terry. Thursday chooses to go on with her life as Karen Settman. As was Monday’s dying wish, the sisters vouch to keep the twins safe.
What Happened to Monday (2017) Themes Analysed:
Released in the same year as “What Happened to Monday,” Bong Joon Ho’s “Okja” has a unique animal at its center, known as the super piglet, which is developed through the use of biotechnology by a multinational company in response to world hunger. The CEO of the Mirando Corporation, Lucy Mirando, begins her inaugural presentation with a stress on her corporation’s dedication and commitment towards the core values of environment and life. Lucy laments “the world is running out of food but we are not talking about it”.
To put an end to the scarcity, Lucy takes recourse to a miracle, which is nothing but the product of biotechnology. It is a super-pig. However, Lucy’s choice of rhetoric carefully eliminates any sign of human manipulation. Lucy claims that the species of super-pigs was first ‘discovered’ in Chile and then bred on a Mirando farm. These genetically manipulated organisms embody the corporate promises to ameliorate world hunger and the fragile environmental state. In the end, Okja is not a solution but a sad monster, a symbol of unbounded corporate fetishization. Okja is an Anthropocene monster.
I chose “Okja” as a point of departure to enter into the thematic concern of “What Happened to Monday.” A constellation of films, of which “Okja” and “What Happened to Monday “are a part (this also extends to include “The Host” and “Geostorm”), has a very traceable association with the Anthropocene. Brought into the popular discourse by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and limnologist Eugene Stoermer, the Anthropocene foregrounds the evidence that human intervention with the Earth system has caused severe alteration in the system and has caused distinct geophysical changes. Then, to heal the wounds caused by their own reckless intervention, monsters and technologies become linchpins of the Anthropocene world– they are the solution to and/or consequence of human disturbance.
The septuplets in “What Happened to Monday” are actually the Anthropocenic monsters. They are the consequence of the huge-scale consumption of genetically modified crops and organisms, which were developed with the objective of combatting food shortages. The consumption has led to a spike in multiple births and genetic defects. However, the very forces, the European Federation, that backed the development of these genetically manipulated crops are now presented with an even bigger problem of feeding the ‘problem.’ The Federation has come up with a solution. It quickly implements the Child Allocation Act which requires the citizens to be subjected to the Child Allocation Act. Under the act, the additional children of a family are taken away by the Bureau and put to cryo sleep. It is revealed that the cryosleep, an advanced technology, burns the children to death while they are asleep.
This is interesting, as with the super-pigs, here, the genetically modified crops were presented as the new-age solution to hunger caused by overpopulation. However, instead of solving the problem, this human intervention exacerbates the problem by increasing the population in manifolds. To curb this problem, a surveillance system is introduced to facilitate the Federation’s aim of keeping the population in check. In tandem with this, there is the cryosleep, which provides the burning of children as the ultimate solution.
