‘The Next 365 Days’ Review: The Endless Love Triangle Continues in This Drama with No Consequences

Here we are again. Less than a year after the sequel to 365 Days made a huge splash on Netflix‘s viewership, we are already facing the third installment in the series of erotic movies. This is a review of The Next 365 Days, and it is a very hard one to write because the material from which the movie is made doesn’t really allow a lot of discussion. Much less analysis around the narrative, characters, or even any sort of discussion around the film’s technical merits.

The 365 Days series of films has to be some of the most empty films ever created. With this new installment, the series proves that it is just a collection of sex scenes, edited one after the other in order to reach a certain running time. There are no characters, and there is no plot. What there is are just a bunch of pretty people being shot while performing very badly shot sex scenes. The first movie in the series was quite a success, but the second installment was much less so. It seems that even the “sex sells” philosophy has a limit.

Even crazier is to fathom that this movie has two directors, Barbara Bialowas and Tomasz Mandes. Bialowas also serves as a writer for the film. Why do you need two directors for this type of film? That is a mystery, but it must have something to do with how fast this movie was made. You can really feel that the producers are pumping these movies out as fast as they can before the audience just gets completely bored with them.

The film stars Anna-Maria Sieklucka, Michele Morrone, Magdalena Lamparska, and Simone Susinna. The film is a direct sequel to 365 Days: This Day, and tells the story of Laura, a woman who has found herself married to a mafia boss in Italy. After the events of the second film, where Laura becomes entangled in a romantic triangle and also gets shot by her husband’s twin brother, Laura steps back to reconsider her marriage and her future plans as a woman.

It is actually baffling that when reaching the one-hour mark in The Next 365 Days, nothing has happened in the film. The consequences of the “impactful” cliffhanger from the end of the last movie are completely brushed away. Instead, the movie thinks that more sex scenes synched to bad music is the key to making the movie better, or to even passing this collection of video clips as a film. Erotic cinema doesn’t mean that it needs to be of poor quality, but this third movie in the franchise has totally given up.

Erotica as a subject in film has always been used sparingly. Many filmmakers don’t want any sort of connection between their films and the adult film industry. One is seen as art, while the other is seen completely as throwaway content for horny people. However, at least the adult film industry knows exactly what it is, and they know exactly what they are making. The Next 365 Days doesn’t really know if they should try to be a film, or just go and admit that it is an XXX adult film, and a pretty bad at that.

The Next 365 Days is based on a book by the same name, and it is quite interesting to see that the adaptation has really done no favors to the novel. It makes the book look more like a one-page summary than anything else. The actors have absolutely nothing to work with in this installment. At least the previous film tried to build some tension when the introduction of the love triangle was made, but here that effort is completely gone. It seems the directors know people are only there for the sex scenes, so why not give them to them.

The film is partially well-shot. The cinematography is clear, and the lighting is great, but the style is closer to that of a music video for a house artist than what you would use for a movie. This has nothing to do with the budget at all. There have been films way cheaper than this with better visuals. The sole reason is that the producers don’t really care about the kind of product they are delivering to Netflix, they just know they have a deal with the platform, and they must deliver.

Will there be a new movie after this one? The books the series is based on only amount to a trilogy, but who knows. These movies look very cheap and fast to make, and if the numbers allow it, they could probably milk this cow for a couple more films. However, there is nothing here that could be called cinema. What we find here is a product made for the masses after a huge success, and if that doesn’t define a souless piece of movie-making, then I don’t know what it is.

Don’t watch this. There are so many other things on Netflix right now that deserve a watch that don’t get it. This, more than a movie, is a waste of time.

SCORE: 2/10