56 Days Review: Toxic Romance Meets Murder Mystery in Prime Video's Twisty Erotic Thriller

At its core, every good love story is about two people realizing that they match each other's freak. The main characters of 56 Days certainly fit the bill, although their freakiness threshold is higher than most — so much so that you may be torn between rooting for a happily ever after and praying that one of them runs for the hills.

Half murder mystery, half twisted romance, 56 Days unfolds over two timelines. In the present day, two Boston detectives investigate a gruesome homicide. An unidentified corpse has been found in the bathtub of a luxury apartment, dissolved to such an extent that the CSI team has to remove bone fragments with a ladle.

Then we jump back in time, introducing the apartment's mysterious tenant, a wealthy young architect named Oliver Kennedy (Avan Jogia). Fifty-six days ago, he met a beautiful woman at a grocery store. Like Oliver, Ciara Wyse (Dove Cameron) is new to the city — although her working class background immediately puts their budding relationship on unequal footing. She lives in a termite-infested attic and wears what she describes as "disposable fashion," whereas he comes from old money and invites her to an exclusive cocktail bar for their first date. Over the next eight episodes we track their increasingly messy affair, regularly skipping forward to revisit the crime scene in Oliver's bathroom. At some point during the two months between then and now, someone will end up dead. But who killed whom, and why? Is Oliver destined to murder Ciara, or vice versa? Or do those gloopy remains belong to someone else entirely?

In Episode 1, Oliver displays enough red flags that the answer seems obvious. He's twitchy, intense, and jarringly volatile, fleeing mid-conversation when Ciara makes a pointed remark about the destructive impact of keeping secrets. Out of earshot in the middle of their first date, he calls his therapist in a panic, yelling that he's "doing it again" and he's scared of what might happen. Later, when he drops off Ciara in an Uber instead of inviting her home, it's as if he's consciously trying to save her from himself. Then when they do sleep together after their second date, Ciara wakes up in the middle of the night to find him doing weirdly aggressive meditation exercises, channeling American Psycho's Patrick Bateman as he glares out over the Boston skyline. Whether we're talking about his paranoid outbursts or his tangible reluctance to reveal any meaningful personal information, the vibes are unmistakably off.

But in the last minutes of the episode, the show unveils a twist that will fuel our curiosity until the finale. Ciara, it turns out, is living under a false identity — not just using a fake name, but fabricating an entire backstory, rehearsing her lines in front of a mirror before her supposedly coincidental meet-cute with Oliver. Rather than being a lonely ingenue who got swept off her feet by a hot but unstable stranger, she orchestrated their encounter from start to finish. 

7.7

56 Days

at Prime Video

Like

• The murder mystery will keep you coming back for more
• Loved the twists and turns in Oliver and Ciara's duplicitous relationship
• Karla Souza brings plenty of personality to her role as homicide detective

Dislike

• Oliver and Ciara's relationship works better as a cat-and-mouse game than as a romance

Adapted by writers Karyn Usher (Prison Break) and Lisa Zwerling (ER), and produced by horror mastermind James Wan (Saw; The Conjuring), 56 Days started out as a novel by Catherine Ryan Howard. The original story took place during lockdown, providing a plausible impetus for these two young lovers to move in together when they're still virtually strangers. For better or worse, the TV adaptation follows in the footsteps of most 2020s-era pop culture and erases the pandemic from its narrative. Ciara winds up living in Oliver's apartment for different reasons, ensconcing herself next door to Chekhov's Bathtub and dropping a bunch of clues for our detective characters to comb through in the present day.

Often, this kind of dual-storyline flashback structure feels unbalanced — especially in mystery dramas, where it's easy to get invested in one half of the plot while the other starts to drag. Not so for 56 Days. We want to know how the murder went down, but Oliver and Ciara's flirtatious psychodrama is equally gripping because it's impossible to guess what they're trying to get out of each other. Are they both driven by real attraction? Is Ciara a scammer targeting Oliver for his wealth, or are her motives more complex?

Looking back on their first date small talk, their dynamic takes on a different tone. Ciara's casual questions become a manipulative interrogation, designed to push Oliver's buttons and send him into a tailspin. So maybe he's the real victim here. A few days later, though, a random woman approaches Ciara in the street, attempting to warn her that Oliver is dangerous. So both of them are lying about something major, while trying their hardest — for reasons we don't yet understand — to make this relationship work.

In the present day, the investigation storyline adopts a more traditional cop drama tone. Detectives Karl Connolly (Dorian Missick) and Lee Reardon (Karla Souza) bring morbid humor to the crime scene, bantering back and forth as they comb through the debris of Oliver and Ciara's home. In the cold light of day, the apartment isn't just a showcase for obnoxious yuppy minimalism; it's a cornucopia of potential murder weapons. Every piece of angular furniture and weighty artwork (surely picked out by an interior designer rather than Oliver himself) looks ominous. And that's before we get into the drug stash. 

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Whenever we learn a juicy new detail about Ciara and Oliver's backstory, we return to the Connolly/Reardon timeline with more questions about the pivotal murder. Structured around well-paced twists, this show appreciates the trashy appeal of airport thrillers. Yet it still makes smart choices regarding realistic motives for dark and destructive deeds. Surprisingly, its main weakness is actually the romance side of things. Avan Jogia's Oliver is all staring-eyed intensity, while Dove Cameron balances faux-naive seductiveness with a creepy, calculating undertone. But while that works when we view their relationship as a duplicitous power struggle, I had trouble buying the idea that Oliver and Ciara might fall in love.

Like a spy movie where an undercover agent accidentally falls for their mark, 56 Days wants us to embrace the possibility of Oliver and Ciara catching feelings. Both have dangerous secrets and dubious ethics, but after weeks of intimacy, the lines around their deceptions begin to blur. Naturally, that invites the question of whether a relationship can succeed if the whole thing is built on lies, adding further tension to the eventual murder scene in their home.

Personally, I love a toxic romance where both participants are scheming predators and/or emotionally unstable liars. That's what makes Interview with the Vampire so enthralling. Ditto NBC's Hannibal and, in a different way, Killing Eve. Unlike those shows, however, 56 Days doesn't give OIiver and Ciara's authentic selves enough time to breathe. We're not given quite enough to root for. One issue here is the sex scenes, which act more as a showcase for the actors' beauty than a storytelling tool to explore their interpersonal dynamic. Two months out from Heated Rivalry, my standards for sexual chemistry are higher than before. Relatedly, it feels notable that this zillennial take on the erotic thriller genre is far more interested in therapy (and manipulative therapy-speak) than it is in actual sex. 

At a cautious estimate, at least 20 new shows this year will probably open with the discovery of a mysterious corpse. 56 Days has enough personality to stand out from the crowd and soon makes its mark as a whodunit, circling a pair of suspects whose motives and life choices are intriguingly enigmatic. Right from the start, Oliver is clearly careening toward some kind of emotional precipice. Insinuating herself into his life like a parasite, Ciara is calculating to a degree that most people would find impossible to comprehend. Yet in some ways their relationship feels like typical dating scene jitters writ large: two lonely people sounding each other out, trying to analyze a prospective partner without revealing anything that might harm their own chance at happiness. Maybe they'll figure out a way to cut through the lies and make an authentic connection — or maybe, of course, one of them will end up dead in a bathtub.

Premieres: Wednesday, Feb. 18 on Prime Video
Who's in it: Dove Cameron, Avan Jogia, Megan Peta Hill, Dorian Missick, Karla Souza, Patch Darragh
Who's behind it: Lisa Zwerling and Karyn Usher (writers and co-creators), James Wan (executive producer)
For fans of: Gone Girl; disastrously chaotic Reddit AITA relationship posts
Episodes watched: 8 of 8