Since its release on Netflix in June of 2020, the Polish erotic drama 365 Days (365 Dni in the original Polish) has been reaching new heights in popularity. Since June, 365 Days has broken records very few films before it has achieved: it is currently the top ranked film on Netflix that was released this year, it was the most streamed movie in the month of June, and it is the only film on Netflix ever to be knocked out of its top spot on Netflix’s Daily Top 10 and reclaim the number 1 ranking – and the film has done this twice.
365 Days has spent 42 consecutive days (so far) on the Daily Top 10 list. (The only other movie that has lasted that long on the list is Despicable Me, lasting 49 days on the list from April 16th to June 3rd.) Taking all this into consideration, 365 Days is well on its way to being the most popular film of 2020.
So why is 365 Days the movie to beat this year? Is it some masterpiece of cinema in the vein of Get Out or Parasite? Well, it seems that audiences and critics alike are saying…no. Currently on Rotten Tomatoes, the film is sitting at a hard 0% percent with critics, and has scored a mere 30% with audiences. (For comparison, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, oft dubbed “the worst film ever made”, has a 25% with critics and a 47% with audiences.) Cosmopolitan‘s Taylor Andrews declared 365 Days, “the worst thing I’ve ever seen” and a “dumpster-fire movie.” Feminist journalists and bloggers have heavily criticized the film for fetishizing abusive relationships and Stockholm Syndrome.
So why is such a disaster of film-making the prospective movie of the year? Is it because human beings feel compelled to stare at car accidents? Is it because we’re all lonely during lockdown and languishing for some lasciviousness? The world may never know.
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