This is not a review.
Oh sure, it’ll be written the same as any review I’ve ever put on here or elsewhere, and I will be giving my unvarnished thoughts on the film in question same as always. But this is not a review. This is target practice.
I could have easily just let this one go by the wayside. Anyone who has even heard of this film beforehand will already be aware of how trash it is, why it’s not worth watching even for the highly specific nature of its existence, and therefore anything I have to add to it would be rather pointless.
But I’m not about to give this film special treatment. I didn’t spare Fifty Shades. I didn’t spare The Kissing Booth. I’m still not sparing the After series. And even outside of the Wattpad set, I didn’t spare The Invitation or The Exorcism Of God. This wave of cinematic fanfiction is only growing stronger, and I’ll be damned if I let any of it get past me. So… yeah. Let’s have fun with this one. Dude knows it’s not letting me have any by any other means.
I’m still not entirely sure what kind of dark magic ritual took place on-set for this, but by some arcane anti-miracle, we have even less plot than in 365 Days: This Day. At least that film had the nonsense with the twin brother and the third leg of the love triangle in Nacho; this doesn’t even have that much. It’s still the same porn montages spliced with the occasional parades of sloshed and vapid Eurotrash, but there isn’t even the barest pretense that anything is tying it all together. It doesn’t help that they’ve once again hand-waved away the last film’s cliffhanger, making Laura now a twice-survivor of contrived off-screen death.
And speaking of things one would wish was in more of this just to make things a little less painful to sit through, let’s get into the production values again. There’s actually a brief moment where, for just a few seconds, DP Bartek Cierlica and editor Marcin Drewnowski show that they have actual skill at film craft. It involves a scene where Laura’s drunk best friend gets chased around a building by a club bouncer, and while the superimposition work is pretty standard, it is still the most interesting moment in the entire film. Namely, because it isn’t shot like a goddamn music video.
At this stage, I’m convinced that these films don’t exist for actual viewing, but just to justify selling the soundtracks. With how much lifting these songs do for the vast majority of the film, there’s little other reason for why this film is constructed like this. Shame that the soundtrack is still naff, though. It’s trying so damn hard to be dark and seductive that it comes across as incredibly try-hard and desperate, not unlike the ‘characters’ they’re playing behind. I mean, there’s literally a song on here called Fuck Society, which contains the lyric “I want your dignity”. Not sure if that’s referring to the actors for being in it or me for watching it, but either way, mission accomplished.
But hey, the sex scenes have something slightly different in them this time around: They’re slightly gayer now! Along with Laura’s prominent kissing of a pole dancer, we also get… oh jeez… a scene where Laura fantasizes about Massimo and Nacho on top of her and making out with each other. I don’t think I have ever seen a more glaring example of gay erotica designed solely for the titillation of straights before, and it only further clarifies the specific demographic these films, and the original books, were made for. I’ll once again admit that I am outside of said demographic, but I don’t see that as an excuse for allowing filmmakers to pander to their audiences with garbage.
I will admit one thing, though: I did make a mistake in my review for the last film. I got Nacho and Massimo’s twin brother mixed up, and thought that the twin was the one shtupping Laura for a while there. Whether this is me being fallible, or these characters being so bland that they’re interchangeable, can be decided amongst yourselves, but it’s not as if the ‘drama’ is all that compelling to begin with. And just to make matters worse, we get a few scenes with Laura getting away from it all and speaking with her parents. Her mother proceeds to give relationship advice on balancing your own priorities with those of your partner, and holy shit, I take back everything I said about the previous film being in any way self-aware. Even in a film that exists primarily for the leads to make each other cum on repeat, this is still the biggest load to be found in all three films. Gross way of putting it? Sure. But still not as gross as how much time these things have wasted.
There’s really nothing else to be said about this. Forget watching for the articles, forget swinger party background noise, this is a glorified soundtrack sampler at best. Its approach to softcore only gets more and more irritating as the filmmakers keep forcing it, the characters are so affluent and basic that, as I’ve inadvertently shown, it’s difficult to even tell them apart at times, and the token attempts at emotionality are premium-grade horse manure. I’m almost impressed at the concerted efforts to make an entire trilogy of films where, when all is said and done, nothing happened. And if anyone gets the bright fucking idea to take this series any further than this, there will be hell to pay.
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