While the first four minutes of The Next 365 Days don’t explicitly confirm that the trilogy’s heroine, Laura, is not dead, the final 365 Days movie’s teaser does effectively seem to retcon the shocking ending of 365 Days: This Day. For most critics, the success of the 365 Days franchise is a mystery. Essentially a raunchier, more risqué retelling of 50 Shades of Gray — which itself is an R-rated retelling of the Twilight saga — the badly-reviewed 365 Days series is massively popular on Netflix despite its frequently criticized writing and acting.
The primary appeal of the 365 Days movies appears to be the franchise’s combination of extremely explicit sex scenes and campy soap operatics. Amid its erotic interludes, the 365 Days movies feature a string of absurdly unlikely twists that keep viewers guessing and stretch the disbelief of even the most forgiving fans. As if to underline this, the first four minutes of The Next 365 Days, featuring Anna-Maria Sieklucka reprising her role as the apparently still-alive Laura Biel, revealed that 365 Days: This Day’s ending was a fake-out lifted verbatim from the original 365 Days.
The critically derided Netflix trilogy released the first four minutes of its final installment, and despite what the ending of 365 Days: This Day heavily implied, it turns out that the second movie in the series didn’t kill off its heroine, Laura. This sort of cliffhanger ending could be acceptable in most circumstances, as it is not unusual for thrillers to end on exciting, ambiguous notes only for the next movie in the series to save the protagonist’s life thanks to some unlikely plot contrivance. However, what makes the opening of The Next 365 Days so egregious is the fact that the original 365 Days used the exact same ending — albeit with Laura seemingly dying in a car crash rather than a shootout — only to stage the exact same “surprise” revelation in the sequel’s opening scenes.
Why Laura Was Always Going To Be In 365 Days 3
This is the second movie in a row where the 365 Days trilogy has pretended Laura is dead for the sake of a cliffhanger, but judging by the comments online, few viewers were fooled this time around. Laura is the heroine of the series and its POV character, meaning the repeated fake-out deaths don’t carry much weight when the franchise wouldn’t function without her. The 365 Days trilogy centers its entire story around the toxic love affair between Laura and mob boss Massimo, meaning it would make no sense for the series to continue in The Next 365 Days after Laura’s demise.
Despite this fact, the 365 Days movies still recycled the same tired twist in both movie's endings, likely because the creators know there is no other option when it comes to a tense ending to each installment. The amoral 365 Days franchise antihero Massimo essentially can’t die since he is a ludicrously overpowered, hyper-competent action hero, and none of the supporting cast has any memorable characterization that would make their potential demises meaningful or worrying. As such, an early look at The Next 365 Days confirms that the trilogy’s final chapter simply rehashed the twist from 365 Days: This Day in the hopes that 365 Days franchise fans wouldn’t notice or care.