"What Happened to Monday?" is a dystopian science fiction action thriller about seven identical sisters all named after the days of the week, caught up in a massive Orwellian conspiracy. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's a damn good time of a movie. Are you not sold yet on watching this movie? Can I stop there? Fine. Then please, allow me to sing this movie's praises while trying my darndest to remain SPOILER FREE.

In the world of "What Happened to Monday?" society faces the very real threat of overpopulation. Food, water, and places to live become very scarce. To combat this, the Child Allocation Bureau (CAB) enact a law that makes it illegal for families to have more than one child. If they do, in the case of twins for instance, then the extra kids are cryogenically frozen, to be reawakened when things "get better." Not only that, but people around the world are forced to wear these I.D. bracelets, and must pass through and sign in to various checkpoints around the world, again, in a very "1984" style.

"WHM?" succeeds as a movie in a few different ways.

Again, without giving anything specific away, "WHM?" is a really well-plotted movie. It doesn't waste its time at launching its story - at the beginning of the movie, we get the premise - it is illegal for a parent to have more than one child.

Immediately, the movie presents us a problem: a woman dies in labor after giving birth to seven identical girls (yowzah), and are left in the care of their grandfather.

The seven girls grow up and opt to live in secret, pretending to be one single woman, Karen, with each of them going outside on the day of the week they're named after. And then BAM - one of them goes missing, another monkey wrench is thrown into the plot, not 30 minutes into the movie. And this doesn't stop there either - the story unwinds in a similar fashion, plot twists happening one after another, changes in the story that never really feel cheap or like they come out of nowhere, but always feel organic, keep you as the audience guessing as to what comes next.

Some of the plot twists might be predictable, particularly for people who watch a lot of movies, those who kinda "get" how most stories like these unfold. But it works, feels exciting and interesting like 95% of the time.

"WHM?" stars Noomi Rapace as the 7-sisters-of-the-week. I haven't seen her in anything else before (I missed her in "Prometheus"), but she did a really great job with this movie. The sisters, as written, are not the deepest, 3-dimensional characters ever brought to the screen. They each have one or two defining traits: the one who's smart, the one who likes to party, bro, the one who works out, etc.

BUT, Noomi infuses each character with enough subtlety through her performances, so that each different sister feels sufficiently different from each other. In fact, some of the best scenes in the movie are the ones that happen with all of the sisters on screen, interacting with one another, having dinner, laughing. It feels real, genuine, so much so that cornball-me immediately had to look up if Noomi Rapace was one person or seven.

Besides Noomi, "WHM?" stars Willem Dafoe and Glenn Close, who both turn in good (but not like amazing) performances. Glenn Close, particularly, does come off at times like a mustache-twirling villain, spouting cold, philosophical dialogue, using the word "humans" in casual conversation like she's some kind of "Terminator"-robot, but as the movie goes on we get enough of an emotional core to her character, through her performance and her character's motivation, that she is a person of power in a tough situation, making the tough calls, as right or wrong as they are.

I would in no way call this movie a 'comedy.' But at the same time, a movie like this needs moments of humor and levity. Otherwise, the movie could come off as self-important, as too up-its-own-ass.

For instance: there's a scene where a soldier is inside of a building, trying to hunt down one of our main characters. His leader-guy radios him from outside the building, asks him "Do you need back up?" The soldier inside promptly gets shot with a machine gun and falls through a window onto the ground in front of his leader-man. The leader-dude looks down at his dead subordinate and mutters "...guess so."

This movie, though it does deal with some heavy-handed ideas, doesn't forget to have fun, something I feel a lot of thriller-type movies forget to do. It's kinda cheesy, in a TV movie sort of way, but to me that makes it kind of endearing.

Also, there are signs hung up around the city that say "Sterilization - Walk-Ins Welcome." This movie knew what it was doing.

Yes, this movie is full of over the top science fiction action nonsense, but that doesn't change the fact that it does tackle some pretty relevant, hefty ideas, namely that of overpopulation (but also some subtle-ish abortion stuff, via the government trying to have any say in a person's reproductive system). And the movie does it without coming off as too preachy or having too obvious a stance on the subject.

It explores both sides of the issue in fairways, I would say. Having the government of the world tell people that they are only allowed to have one child per family is insanity, and the government's methodology in this movie is straight out of Big Brother. There is no way anyone could say that putting in laws in place to curb the population is right, and this movie makes a point of saying that much.

But at the same time, the movie ends with a line or two of dialogue that goes like this: "This planet is the only home you will ever know. So look around you - who will continue to make the difficult decisions that will ensure your survival?"

And I think that's the best way to discuss any kind of heavy issue in a dumb-action movie - explore both sides. The good and the bad.

"What Happened to Monday?" is not a movie that will change your life.

But it's entertaining, it's silly, and it's worth your time to watch.

In my esteemed opinion, this movie gets the coveted:

Overpopulation Is Scary/10