Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Next 365 Days’ on Netflix, the Turgid Third Movie in the Polish Sex Saga

It slogs on: The Next 365 Days is the third movie in the turgid erotic Polish/shot-in-Italy/mostly-English-language mess of a Netflix franchise, and considering that ending, it’s probably not the last. So one assumes they’re cheap enough to make and successful enough in viewership numbers to justify their existence, in spite of the glaringly obvious fact that they’re objectively abominable in their barely written, ethically queasy, utterly vacuous, theoretically “sexy” kind of way. They’re quite distinctive in their badness, putting them in a subcategory below prurient dreck like the Fifty Shades series, post-Basic Instinct preposterous thrillers and Nickelback videos. So mayhaps it’s wise to divorce analysis of these movies from the whole of the filmmaking art, and stick to intra-franchise comparisons: Is it possible that The Next 365 Days is even worse than the previous two?

THE NEXT 365 DAYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Before we get too deep here (phrasing), we need to recap the ending of 365 Days: This Day: The marital “bliss” between rich and rapey gangster Massimo (Michele Morrone) and quasi-slave-wife Laura (Anna-Maria Sieklucka) went all topsy-turvy when she thought he was cheating on her – but it turns out the man she saw fornicating with another woman was actually Massimo’s (gasp) twin brother. She GTFO’d and started hanging out with another hunky slab of muscle named Nacho (Simone Sussina), who masqueraded as Massimo’s gardener but was actually the son of Massimo’s gangster rival. You may recall that Laura and Nacho never had sex, because their sex scenes were just her PRIMAL FANTASIES. And then the movie concluded with an incomprehensible shootout in which Massimo’s twin died and Laura took a bullet to the abdomen. Consider that cliff totally hanged!

In other words, I’m here to inform you that the end of This Day was not, as you may have initially suspected, a hallucination.

So, on to The Next: We pick up as Massimo and his men meet with Nacho and his men and they glower at each other for a while before gabbing about continuing an ugly, bloody gang war. They come to a truce, and if this isn’t immediately prevalent due to the garbled, confusing ESL dialogue, one eventually figures it out, since there are no more shootouts or assassinations in the movie. Massimo visits a grave – and it’s not Laura’s!!!1!1!!!!1! It’s his brother’s. He goes home and Laura is very much alive, and also horny. (Perhaps you’ve noticed that everyone in this movie series is permanently horny.) But Massimo reminds her that the doctor says no schtupping until she’s all healed up, so instead of getting a sex scene after the first five minutes of the movie, we have to wait five more.

I’m already blowing my word count summing up the first five minutes, but that’s really not an issue, because the remaining 108 are a plot wasteland. OK, so Laura and Massimo bang, but then the marriage hits the rocks and she throws herself into “work” – you may recall, in the previous movie Massimo bought her a clothing-design company which she never bothered to have anything to do with until now. She and her bestie Olga (Magdalena Lamparska) hang out. In lieu of rutting with Massimo, she enjoys soggy Nacho fantasies, just like I do when I’m on a diet! (That’s the last of the too-easy Nacho jokes, promise.) Massimo goes to gangster parties with coke and hookers, and I think he remains faithful; it’s hard to tell when you’re watching a random collection of shots of bare chests and butts and breasts in various iterations of sexual congress. Laura and Olga go to Lagos for a fashion thingy and wouldn’t you know it, Nacho is f—ing there. Is this COINCIDENCE, or just FATE? Moot point, because either way, Laura’s at a crossroads – does she commit her genitals to this gangster or that other gangster? Who will she choo-choo-choose? NO SPOILERS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: They should’ve made 50 50 Shades movies (they still could!), and they should make 365 365 Days movies.

Performance Worth Watching: [We’re sorry, the number you have dialed has been disconnected. Please check the number and dial again.]

Memorable Dialogue: This is the fun part! A choice monologue from Laura: “When I got shot, our relationship almost died with me. I was trying to save it, and you, you were speculating and diving into your dark limbo, which I was not allowed to enter. Now I’m in my own limbo.”

Please allow me to translate: Their relationship would’ve died if she had died, no question about it. She was trying to save either her life or their relationship, not sure which, although they’re very much connected, so I guess it doesn’t matter. He dived into a dark limbo, which is like a pool with a hard plastic cover that Massimo put on it after he dived into it, because Laura subsequently couldn’t dive into it. And now she has her own pool! And married people should be sharing a dark-limbo pool, not diving into their own individual dark-limbo pools.

Sex and Skin: The usual frequent softcore one-on-ones, but this movie throws in an orgy or two to spice the broth. Still no schlongs in the frame, though!

Our Take: Talk about your dark-limbo pools. If ever a movie was a metaphorical dark-limbo pool, it’s The Next 365 Days. The latest chapter in the quaggy eroto-saga of Laura and Massimo is DOA nearly all the way – “nearly” because it drops in a real hell of a hoot of a howler of a third-act dream sequence that’s a brief bit of audacity before resuming the movie’s dreary cycle of montages, Olga’s godawful comic relief, ponderous images of Laura brooding and smarmy-smeary sex scenes, all rife with mondo-mutilated English dialogue and set to an incessant and interminable downtempo dreck-rock soundtrack. (Hot tip: Turn on the subtitles, and subject yourself to the dismal song lyrics!)

So, you may ask, what makes it any different to the previous 365 Dayses? At least the first movie’s gross misogyny made us feel something – most likely sick to our stomachs – and 365 Days: This Day was laughably nutty with its lobotomized soap opera twists. The Next 365 Days is a flat-out crushing, crashing, smashing, staggering bore. If you’re here for the sex scenes – and who isn’t? – let it be known that directors Barabara Bialowas and Tomasz Mandes could’ve cut in the same schtup-sequences from the previous movies and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. (Did the light glint off Sussina’s buttcrack hair so poetically in the last movie as it does here? Probably!) The movie trudges along slowly and repetitively until reaching an unconclusion that might be frustrating if we were at all invested in Laura’s inner conflict. Netflix sure seems to be banking on piqued interest for The Next 365 Days After the Last 365 Days, because this one sure leaves us hanging and dangling like, I dunno, like something that hangs and dangles that these movies make us think about, but never shows us.

Our Call: Yes, The Next 365 Days is worse than the other two movies. Hard to believe, but it’s true. SKIP IT with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream The Next 365 Days on Netflix