Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Nikias Chryssos.
In the 1980s a film like Bloody Tennis would have been categorized as “straight to video” and sent off to the VHS junk pile. Some of these films would escape to cozy confines of a basement betamax, while others would be doomed to sit on the dank and dusty shelves of a degenerate video store.
However, in 2026 with the demise of the video store and linear TV, we’re treated to a veritable wealth of “straight to video” lunacy. Day in. Day out. The world is littered with also-rand films.
Bloody Tennis, directed by German filmmaker Nikias Chryssos, is interestingly, a film that could easily be lumped in with the online world of mediocre horror, but it’s also a fairly well done film with well-developed, if not derivative, characters. If you’re looking for originality you may have to look elsewhere. Bloody Tennis is a literal homage to Suspiria. Replace ballet for tennis and you’ve effectively got the exact same film.
This pic follows an American tennis phenom Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) as the fish-out-water who’s been invited to participate in the best tennis academy in Europe. This isn’t just your state-of-the-art tennis academy. This academy operates on fierce competition, anger, and lots of leeches. It’s a real racket.
The academy is only for select competitors and Sophie is quickly introduced to the other five women whom she’ll be battling with. In addition, to the other tennis savants, the academy is run by an older couple, Frida (Juliana Vieira-Guerra) and Stavkos (Zlatko Buric), and their bizarre lackey Fred (Vincent Romeo) with the one of the more memorable bowl cuts in recent history.
The three oddballs have convinced the women, and ostensibly their parents, that this academy will propel them into the Serene Williams stratosphere. From the start Bloody Tennis presents an peculiar and off-putting aura that surrounds the academy, Frida is obsessed with plying leeches to the women and her weird assistant Fred, seeks out stray cats and turns their intestines into tennis racket strings.
In addition to the academy’s forced competition amongst the women, there’s a passingly interesting lesbian affair between our protagonist Sophie and her only friend, Bana (Tracy Gotoas). While Bloody Tennis does devolve into a killing-by-numbers affair, each of the tennis players has a somewhat interesting character arch, and each are well acted in way that generally has the audience engaged in their plight — foot faults and all.
At the half-way point Frida announces that they’ll be a final competition for a spot a Wimbledon. Winners keep completing. Losers go home. Except in this case “go home” is a euphemism for DEATH! Each of the player’s deaths are pretty spectacular with some well-placed practical effects, including a gnarly hedge spike impaling that goes from the chin to the top of the forehead. It’s just as bad as it sounds.
Bloody Tennis does come to a tepid conclusion involving Sophie fighting it out with her lover, Bana, but the plot never quite answers the lingering questions about the mystery surrounding Frida and Stavkos.
Should you see Bloody Tennis?
Baring the aforementioned VHS junk pile comparison, Bloody Tennis is a pretty compelling story that presents a decent version of Argento’s masterpiece, Suspiria. The problem is that there are no witches in Bloody Tennis. There’s nothing supernatural. Frida and Stavkos don’t appear to be serial killers. The film offers nothing in the way of exposition about these supernatural happenings.
We’re left with three mildly odd people running a tennis academy. They want the “best” for the women and they want to see them complete, but there’s no explanation for their odd behavior or the spell that has subjugated the women.
Parts of Bloody Tennis are quite good. Great film work. Interesting and engaging tennis matches. And most importantly some really well done gore. The big problem with Bloody Tennis is that we never get to any sort of resolution with regard to the motivation of the academy. All we’re left with is some really gross tennis rackets and a handful of leeches.
Bloody Tennis is likely Rated R and streaming on Shudder.