Bloody Tennis Review: Nikias Chryssos Serves Up Suspiria for Athletes
- Director Nikias Chryssos
- Starring Sandra Guldberg Kampp, Elina Löwensohn, Zlatko Burić
- Released 25 September 2026 on Shudder
- Runtime 1 hr 34 min
- Distributor Shudder
- Subgenre Sports horror, slasher
- Reviewed by Hope Madden
A young American player joins a remote European tennis academy to train among the best, only to find its headmistress, its tiny staff and its regime far more sinister than anyone across the net.
Bloody Tennis is the new sports horror film from German filmmaker Nikias Chryssos, and its title is no bluff. It sends a promising young player to a remote academy where the training is harsh, the staff are odd and the courts do not stay clean for long. Sandra Guldberg Kampp leads the cast, with Elina Löwensohn running the school. Chryssos makes no secret of where his ideas come from, which raises a fair question: does a film this open about its debts bring enough of its own? In this Bloody Tennis review, Hope Madden weighs the gore, the dark humour and the performances against what the film leaves on the court.
Bloody Tennis wears its influences openly, pairing a Suspiria-style academy with the slasher’s appetite for blood, and Sandra Guldberg Kampp anchors it with a quiet, animal watchfulness. It lacks the depth and mystery to be truly memorable, but as a gory, darkly funny look at what elite sport costs body and soul, it makes an intriguing watch.
Suspiria on the Tennis Court
German filmmaker Nikias Chryssos does not hide his influences. After witnessing the brutal slaying of a beautiful girl, we watch a young American student being driven to an exotic if spooky European academy where she will be trained among the elite in her field.
Bloody Tennis is Suspiria for athletes. Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) is the athlete newly arrived at the Mary Tyrone Tennis Academy. She’s welcomed, in a way, by Ms. Tyrone (Elina Löwensohn, Nadja) herself. It isn’t a warm welcome.
“I’m your daddy now.”
The class is small: six players (minutes the girl we watched die in the opening moments, whose absence makes room for Sophie). Aside from Ms. Tyrone, head mistress and team doctor, there’s one coach (Zlatko Buric) and one handyman/chauffeur/cook/weirdo (Vincent Romeo).
Though the title suggests a campy comedy, the dark, creepy humor that runs through Bloody Tennis is anything but camp. And while his underlying structure is reminiscent of Suspiria, Chryssos leans just as heavily toward slasher. (Also an Italian genre, owing to Mario Bava’s 1971 originator, A Bay of Blood).
That’s not to suggest the film is somehow untrue to its title. There’s a lot of blood (some of it pretty inspired) and a lot of tennis.
Sandra Guldberg Kampp Anchors the Carnage
Though Guldberg Kampp is not entirely convincing as an American (she’s Danish), her performance otherwise compellingly anchors the film. Sophie is curious and observant, her personality mainly interior. Guldberg Kampp navigates Sophie’s arc with a quietly animalistic nature that suits the film and the character.
The rest of the athletes are offered little opportunity to really craft characters, but each is solid. Löwensohn’s gleefully committed and Romeo is unsettlingly odd.
What Bloody Tennis Says About the Cost of Elite Sport
The film’s themes are as unhidden as its influences. Training to be an elite athlete is a soul and body ruining exercise, as punishing as it is bloodthirsty. There is perhaps less depth and less mystery to Bloody Tennis than it needed to be genuinely memorable, but it’s an intriguing, gory reminder that women’s sports is where it’s at.
The Verdict: Is Bloody Tennis Worth Watching?
The verdict
A gory, darkly funny cross of Suspiria and slasher with a strong lead, though it lacks the depth and mystery to stay with you for long.
Watch it if: you want academy horror with Italian roots, plenty of inspired bloodshed and a creepy sense of humour that never tips into camp.
Skip it if: you need a deep mystery, a fully developed supporting cast or a film that hides its influences.
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Hope “Madd at the Movies” Madden, a graduate of The Ohio State University, is a freelance writer and co-founder of maddwolf.com. In addition to 12 years at the award-winning independent weekly newspaper The Other Paper, Hope has written for Columbus Monthly Magazine, The Ohio State University Alumni Magazine, is a published poet and fiction writer. She also currently writes for Columbus Underground, Screen Fervor and the UK Film Review.
Hope’s a member of the Critics Choice Association, the Online Association of Female Film Critics, Columbus Film Critics Association and the Women’s Film Critic Circle. She’s also on the Nightmares Film Festival jury. She co-hosts the weekly movie review podcast The Screening Room and the bi-weekly horror film podcast, Fright Club.
In Columbus, Ohio, you can catch Hope on TV every Friday morning on ABC6/Fox28’s Good Day Columbus.
