Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, Film and TV
Simon Fearn
An S&M-tinged Netflix sequel has gone down like a lead balloon with viewers and critics alike, garnering a frankly impressive zero percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
365 Days: This Day, a sequel to 2020 Polish erotic film 365 Days, picks up the twisted relationship between mafia crime lord Massimo (Michele Morrone) and Laura, a woman he kidnaps (Anna-Maria Sieklucka).
In the original film (which also received zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes), Massimo promises to let Laura go if she doesn’t fall in love with him within a year. What follows are several scenes you wouldn’t want to watch with your parents and Massimo repeating his skin-crawling catchphrase ‘are you lost, baby girl?’ several times.
Laura, predictably, falls for Massimo, but her domestic bliss is shattered when a rival mafia family appears to put a successful hit on Laura.
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Despite viewers of the original film being convinced she’d snuffed it, Laura is now back from the dead in this year’s sequel, which dropped on Netflix on Wednesday (27 April). Watch the trailer below:
A synopsis reads: “Laura and Massimo are back and stronger than ever. However, Massimo's family ties and a mysterious man bidding for Laura's heart complicate the lovers' lives.”
While the new movie doubles down on the intense sex scenes, most viewers were less than impressed. The film bagged a zero percent critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 18 percent audience score, marginally worse than the original movie’s 29 percent.
A common complaint was that the film prioritises bedroom scenes and needle drops over plot, but still manages to make the plot confusing as hell.
One viewer wrote on Twitter: “Watching 365 Days: This Day, I can’t stop laughing it’s more like a long music video than a movie wth.”
Another said: “It’s 90 percent sex scenes and 10 percent plot, but am also confused abt the plot like whutt.”
Even fans of the first film struggled to get onboard with the sequel.
Over on LADbible’s Facebook group Netflix Bangers, one viewer wrote: “Compared to the first one, [it] was awful. Highly disappointed.”
Another said: “Watched the first 40 minutes, no storyline as far as I could see. We enjoyed the first film but my husband was bored and went to do the washing up!”
Critics were no less savage in their appraisal of the film.
Variety’s Jessica Kiang referred to the movie as ‘piping hot trash’, though she does admit that ‘the sex scenes are varied, at least in terms of location – honestly, you’ll never look at a putting green the same way’.
IndieWire’s Kate Erbland also did not have a good time watching the film. She wrote: “No, most audiences who tune into 365 Days: This Day are likely not seeking out female empowerment tales or coherent plots, but the disdain with which the film treats both its viewers and its star can’t help but grate.”
If all this has left you thinking 365 Days: This Day sounds like prime hate-watch viewing, you can stream it on Netflix now.
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