At this point, every viewer turning into 365 Days: This Day is doing so for very specific reasons: either for an erotic charge or morbid curiosity to see how bad this bad franchise can sink. The original film was a pandemic breakout for Netflix in 2020, reigning supreme as their number one movie for over a month internationally. It’s based on Polish writer Barbara Bialowas’ trilogy of best-selling erotic novels, clearly inspired from the successful Fifty Shades of Grey series, itself inspired from the Twilight series, the gift that keeps on giving. The first 365 Days got its name from its lead character being held captive by a mafia scion who just knew that this woman would fall in love with him during the time it took the Earth to revolve around the sun. This obviously problematic dynamic led many viewers to detest the movie and its depiction of romance where consent is definitely a concern, not that it would be the first Stockholm syndrome romance in cinema history. 365 Days was a hit explicitly for its explicit and off-putting aggressive sex scenes. Now that we have two sequels prepped, the question remains whether it can still maintain its performance or whether the franchise suffers from diminished returns. Simply put, this sequel isn’t as problematic as the first movie but it’s just as boring and possibly more pointless.

At the end of the first film, Laura (Anna-Maria Sieklucka) survived her tunnel attack but lost her pregnancy. She hasn’t told her jailer/boyfriend/now-husband Massimo (Michael Morrone) about the baby. They wed, they honeymoon, and she begins to resent feeling like a caged woman (oh lady, I thought that was what won you over?) and then she sees Massimo having sex with his ex-girlfriend. She runs away with Nacho (Simone Susinna), a hunky gardener with even more tattoos than Massimo. The new man whisks her away to his beachfront abode and says he only wants to protect her. Masismo is flummoxed trying to find the absentee Laura while a rival crime family schemes to take her out and make a move while Massimo is so torn and distracted.

The first thing you’ll realize very early on in 365 Days: This Day is that there simply is not enough material here to cover almost two hours of running time. This movie is starched beyond the breaking point, and I’m not even making a pun here. There are twenty-two songs credited to this movie, and when a song plays, it’s not like some needle drop that only plays for a few seconds to impart a very specific impression. These songs are like full renditions. That’s why the movie often feels like a collection of music videos and luxury resort commercials. We’ll watch Laura and Massimo frolic on the beach, go horseback riding, and slinking into a bubble bath, all inter-cut together. If you just cut to an R&B group occasionally singing to the camera, it would all feel complete. Sometimes we are mere seconds between songs. Just as one is ending, another begins, and after 40 minutes of this, I began to question whether this was a deliberate creative decision by the filmmakers to limit the number of scenes relying upon the actors speaking. This is a blessing because both Sieklucka and Morrone have difficulty making the pseudo-smoldering dialogue sound right through broken English. There are lines like, “I can’t calm down, I’m Polish!” and Laura referring to her bedroom activities as “a sex.” The literal second line of dialogue is a reference to the bride not wearing any underwear. I think there might be 200 words spoken in this entire movie and a high percentage of them will make you groan or roll your eyes.

I have to devote an entire section to discussing the golf scene. You see, on their luxurious honeymoon, Massimo and Laura spend some time on the links but their kinky foreplay doesn’t take a break. She lays on the green, spreads her legs, and his grips his golf club (do you get it? do you get it?) and then literally putts a white ball across the green and between her open legs (do you get it? do you get it?). As it was happening onscreen, I joked to my girlfriend that it would follow this route, and sure enough, the filmmakers could not resist. It is the comedy high-point of the movie.

It’s not like all these songs are soundtracking sequences of arched backs and heavy thrusting. There are even more music montages for luxury porn than for the soft-core porn. We watch Laura and her friend shop in luxury. We watch them drive in luxury. We watch them walk along the luxurious beach. We watch them jet ski in luxury. We watch them dine in luxury. This is why the majority of the first half of the movie feels like the raw footage from a commercial shoot for a getaway vacation. It’s padding upon padding because the characters of Massimo and Laura are wafer-thin. I was trying to even come up with adjectives to describe either lover, let alone full sentences, and my efforts sounded like a second grader trying to bluff their way through a book report. These characters are so boring that the movie won’t allow them to have any drawn out conversations because then the jig would be up. Even when Massimo confesses to having a brother he never toward Laura, this moment isn’t given extended time for her to interrogate. It’s off to the next shopping or driving montage with sun-dappled cinematography. This is also why the filmmakers have inserted a second couple for us to watch their own blossoming romance, but even this gets resolved so quickly with Massimo’s buddy proposing to Laura’s best pal Olga while they’re all still at the same honeymoon location. They’re supposed to be a distraction and they can’t keep our attention because it’s more characters without defining characteristics beyond their body parts.

The sex is put on hold for half of the movie (with the exception of an occasional frisky dream filling the gap, no pun intended) and 365 Days: This Day becomes a ridiculous soap opera. To fully detail the depths this movie resorts to I’ll need to go into spoilers, if that’s really a concern for you, like this movie is being watched for its storyline. The turning point of the film is when Laura catches Massimo fornicating with his ex BUT WAIT because that wasn’t Massimo but… his coke-addicted, twitchy identical twin brother, Adriano (Morrone is actually far more enjoyable in this dual part). He and the ex are scheming to drive Laura and Massimo apart and then kill them both. They’re being paid by the rival crime family that Nacho belongs to, being the son of the competing mafia boss. This overcooked drama reaches such absurdist heights that it ends on a Mexican standoff with the villains being gunned down, Laura getting shot badly in her abdomen, Massimo finally finding out about his lost child, and a question over where Nacho’s loyalty lies, possibly eliminating Massimo so he can have Laura to himself once and for all. This is like three seasons of soap opera storytelling crammed for the very end of what had otherwise been a ploddingly paced movie lacking needed plot events. Even this sequence is stretched thin by the inane cross-cutting from Laura in danger with Adriano to Massimo and Nacho walking down hallways in excessive slow-motion. I laughed out loud as we jumped from overcooked drama to languidly paced hall walking. The movie has the audacity to end on a cliffhanger, which I suppose also happened with the first movie. If you’re dying to find out what happens to these people in Part Three, I just feel sorry for you.

While the sequel is less problematic over consent than 365 Days, it’s also more boring and tediously forced to draw out the weakest, basest of stories that was never meant to be more than a wish-fulfillment appeal to people’s baser impulses. I don’t want to shame anyone that finds this movie sexy or stimulating. Good for you; attraction is uniquely personal and your found yours. However, this series is making me re-evaluate the Fifty Shades of Grey movies, none of which were good but man at least they were better than this. All of this makes me think the next franchise, inspired by the international streaming success of 365 Days, will be even worse to make me re-evaluate the artistic accomplishment of this very boring, very dumb movie. It is a spiral that will never end and only make us sadder.

Nate’s Grade: D