365 Days (2020)

There comes a time in ones life when they must ask themselves: if life is so shit, why not make it worse? And when that question is raised, the doubt starts to linger. Why not? Why not put yourself through something awful because life’s pretty messed up anyways. Maybe it will help, maybe it will not make things worse. So then you make up your mind and decide to go for it… only to realise that life was never that bad and you just made it a whole lot worse. 365 Days is an awful movie. Step away from 365 Days! Do it now before you make the same mistake I made.

As you can probably tell from the title, I watched 365 Days…. I regret it. But I figured since I did suffer for two hours (luckily together with Sofia who was watching it at the same time) I might as well spend a few minutes on its review. Seems only fair in my opinion. Besides I haven’t reviewed anything in a long time… and THIS seemed like a great one to get myself back in the game with.

But where to begin? 365 Days is a Polish movie based on a Wattpad story. Similar to Fifty Shades of Grey, it has a huge following on the platform and therefor we have this movie. Thank you! You’ve made another…. great one…. come to life. If you didn’t get it, that was sarcasm and turns out this movie is trash. Despite of this it’s still gaining a lot of attention online so I guess this trash has appealed to many. Just like Fifty Shades of Grey which I did not like at all.

Anyway, the movie follows an Italian mafia boss’ son Massimo (Michele Morrone) who is obsessed with this painting of a woman. Then he sees this woman, Laura (Anna Maria Sieklucka), kidnaps her and gives her 365 days to fall in love with him. Huge spoiler that won’t ruin anything: she doesn’t need 365 days – she needs just 61. I’m surprised she didn’t need just 61 hours.

But not only does the movie have a hugely problematic concept, there are scenes that feel rapey and utterly uncomfortable. There is a line between fantasy and reality and 365 Days seems to cross it many times over. The fact that the main guy is hot and rich doesn’t make it okay to kidnap someone, call them baby girl and expect everything to be peachy.

Well, at least in the real world because peachy is exactly how it turned out for our protagonist, a polish girl named Laura. She is kidnapped, she resists at first, then starts teasing him with her sexy body. On numerous occasions. All while a song is playing on the background and everything happening on screen makes the whole thing look like an extended Pornhub music video (not a good one!) And yes, in case it wasn’t obvious, there is a lot of nudity in this. Yet the balance between female and male is again in the favour of the male audience.

So much boob. Not enough man butt and I think just a glimpse of the d from the side. Which is so strange to me as this is clearly aimed towards women! Why would I want to see so much female nudity when I’m there for the tall, dark and handsome? I get there is a very thin line from R-rated to PORN-rated, which this movie comes very close to stepping over, but I just hoped for a bit more man focused shots. That being said, 365 Days has a whole lot more male nudity than Fifty Shades of Grey, so at least it has that going for it! But that’s about it, that’s all it has.

365 Days is a cringe-fest and far from a turn on. Never did I think “man, she’s so lucky” to get to bang that dude on a yacht – while AN OLD DUDE WAS PROBABLY OGGELING AT THEM – because it started off with such an awful premise. Besides, there is no clear timeline established and you only find out like 20 minutes before the end that she was with him for two months. That does not seem enough time. 8 would be fine, I could maybe do with 7 but no less than that. And even then it would be about the Stockholm syndrome more than love itself.

The acting is horrendous and the script doesn’t do the actors any favours. There is a fucking song playing every 5 minutes to accompany a music video type scene for two hours straight. There’s no connection between the main characters besides their genitals touching, I don’t recall them even having a normal conversation that wasn’t driven by sex or something uncomfortable.

Oh, and the watch me getting a blow job scene! That’s honestly the funniest shit I’ve ever seen! She starts to tear up because some other lady is blowing him off and not her!! Shit you not, that is the actual context of that scene. He shows her what she’s missing and she tears up because she doesn’t get to blow her kidnapper. If this is what people enjoy on Wattpad, I’m deeply deeply worried.

The entire plot is choppy up there’s no flow to the movie. There is a montage after montage, many teasing scenes and then BANG, sex stuff, a bit more sex, and then they get into a fight and “break up”. Afterwards, and this is where it gets amazingly idiotic, they make up, have sex against a window and start planning their wedding. AND then we find out she’s pregnant and then she disappears into the tunnel. YEP! That’s all in this movie and that all happens in a span of two months.

As you can see I’m emphasising the two month part because if you do end up watching it after this review (god knows why you’d do this to yourself), you’ll have a timeframe. And that is my gift to you because I did not have this when I watched it. HAd no idea how long she’d been with him because everything felt like the next day and the next day. For me, it felt like a week had passed not just in the movie but also in real life.

Eventually I’m only thinking about the fact why I even watched 365 Days. The closest I came so far is that… shitty movies have the power to make other shitty movies better. So therefore, and I can’t believe I’m saying this. I’m sorry Fifty Shades of Grey… I’m sorry, you actually had something going for you and I didn’t realise it before it was taken away from me. For that, I’m deeply  sorry. 365 Days gets half a cup (which I don’t have as a rating). The half the cup rating is for that tango scene. Tango in 2020 and both very skilled at it.  So much hotter than the other scenes combined… because tango’s hot.

PS: During watching this movie we had a long conversation with Sofia online and you can read some of my incoherent thoughts HERE.