Despite scoring pretty much a full house of negative reviews – and generating its fair share of controversy – Polish erotic thriller 365 Days proved to be something of a sensation when it was released on Netflix in 2020.
Now, two years later, a second film has been released – once again adapted from a novel by Blanka Lipińska and containing just as much sex, mafia drama, and terrible dialogue as the first film.
And another thing the sequel has in common with the first film is that it ends with a major cliffhanger that leaves the fate of a key character unclear.
If you’ve seen the film and need a recap and explanation of those closing scenes, read on to have the 365 Days: This Day ending explained.
365 Days: This Day ending explained – is Laura dead?
Rather than picking up directly from the cliffhanger the first film ended on, the sequel opens with Laura and Massimo’s wedding.
It’s never made clear exactly how Laura escaped her fate at the end of the previous film, but we do know that her unborn baby did not survive the incident and that she never told Massimo she had been pregnant.
Anyway, after a brief honeymoon period, Laura and Massimo’s marriage unsurprisingly begins to go rather awry, with Massimo resuming his Mafia activities and Laura annoyed that his constant protection of her makes it feel like she’s imprisoned.
At around this time, she meets Nacho – a mysterious gardener with whom she strikes up something of a rapport, complaining to him that she is “just a wife” now and making her dissatisfaction with the situation clear.
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At Christmas, some of the cracks are papered over when Massimo gifts Laura ownership of her own luxury fashion brand, but things then take another turn for the worse when he reveals that he has a secret brother whom he hopes never to see again.
Laura is very unhappy about the secrets he’s been keeping and complains about this to Olga, while she also tells her parents of her concerns about the relationship during a dance they had been invited to.
It’s at this same dance that things begin to go really pear-shaped: Laura looks up and sees Massimo flirting with Anna, his ex-girlfriend who appeared in the previous film – and when she follows them she finds them having sex.
Furious, she escapes with Nacho to a beach hideout – and the two quickly find themselves falling for each other, eventually having passionate sex.
Massimo and Domenico hatch a plan to find Laura and bring her back to him, and at one point Nacho is forced to fight off an assailant who tries to break into his home.
As things come to a head various revelations are made: first of all, Nacho reveals that he has been hiding his true identity – he is the son of a prominent mafioso, and key rival of Massimo’s who has been using Laura for nefarious purposes.
He takes her to his father and leaves her with a pair of guards before we see his father negotiating with Massimo – giving him an ultimatum that he must stop expanding his activities, otherwise he will replace him with his twin brother.
Meanwhile, it has also become clear that there is a third player in this war – Massimo’s brother himself, who it turns out is a twin and goes by the name Adriano.
In an abandoned warehouse, Adriano and Anna threaten Laura and she realises that they had been acting together for some time – it wasn’t Massimo she had seen having sex with Anna at her party but Adriano, who is desperate to take revenge on his twin.
Anyway, realising the danger Laura is in, Massimo and Nacho arrive on the scene, now working together given they both have an interest in protecting her – and it quickly develops into a standoff.
Laura manages to wriggle free from Adriano – shortly after her earlier miscarriage is revealed to Massimo – but is shot by Anna as she runs towards her husband.
Nacho and Massimo then shoot Anna and Adriano respectively, before Nacho turns his gun on Massimo, although he eventually decides against shooting him and walks away.
The final scenes we see are of a distraught Massimo holding the severely wounded Laura in his arms – with it left unclear whether she has survived the ordeal.
It seems probable, however, that Laura will indeed make it out alive – she already mysteriously survived a similar near-death experience at the end of the first film, and there’s still one more book in the trilogy for Netflix to adapt…
365 Days: This Day is available to stream on Netflix. Looking for something else to watch? Check out our guide to the best series on Netflix and best movies on Netflix, or visit our TV Guide.
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