Watched a Netflix sci-fi original called What Happened to Monday. This is a flick with an unfortunate similarity to the tv series Orphan Black… unfortunate because what this movie does wrong, Orphan Black does so much better. It’s a little unfair to the movie to compare, I suppose, but they are present.m
So What Happened to Monday is set in a near overpopulated future where a one child policy is ruthlessly enforced by a government agency and its goons. A scientist (in a small part played by Willem Defoe) clones seven girls and raises them in secret, each named for a day of the week which is also the only day they are allowed to leave their home. They are unique individuals in private but they play the same person in the outside world. It’s a pretty irrational plot – they never explain WHY he would want seven clones and the risk seems to outweigh the benefit. And, as if to prove that, Monday doesn’t return on her day out and a mystery is uncovered as well as a series of action and chase set pieces.
The reason this film kind of fails is, in part, because that the actress playing the clones – Noomi Rapace – is not good enough to pull off all the unique personalities. She’s a fine hero in B grade action movies but she doesn’t have a lot of range. And this is where Orphan Black rears its head because Tatiana Maslaney – the star of that show – kills her job of embodying multiple clone characters. On top of that, this film doesn’t always convincingly depict the same actress in multiple characters in the same scene (which Orphan Black nailed). There’s sometimes just something not quite right about the visual effects in a number of shots.
That said, there are some legitimately solid action set pieces, chases, and escapes. It’s not consistently good though as the end of the movie is pretty lame both from the action and storytelling standpoint. But for at least half of the movie, it delivers pretty good thrills and some genuine surprises.
But the highs are constantly battered down by the lows. From the mediocre attempts at playing multiple personalities to a lazy ending, the movie barely ekes by with a positive nod. But if you are the kind of person who will roll with these limitations, there’s some decent stuff going on in this Netflix flick. Might be worth a peek.
Score: 72