Inside the Gory Suspiria-Inspired Queer Slasher Bloody Tennis
Director Nikias Chryssos and star Sandra Guldberg Kampp break down their gruesome sports horror film
by Lana Thorn 24 September 2026
Shudder
After Black Swan tackled ballet and last year’s Him did American football, Nikias Chryssos’ Bloody Tennis is now giving the racquet sport the horror treatment. Starring Sandra Guldberg Kampp as an American player who travels to a remote, elite European academy, this body horror-filled, Argento-tinged slasher sees six young women compete for a wild card spot at Wimbledon. As their headmistress (Elina Löwensohn of the cult vampire film Nadja) and instructor (Zlatko Burić, playing another creepy figure after Something Very Bad is Going to Happen) test their limits, rivalry, fraught friendships, and budding romance all threaten to distract the players from winning, and the competition soon becomes cutthroat in a very literal sense.
Ahead of the film’s release on Shudder, the Greek-German filmmaker and the Danish star spoke with Phantasmag about what attracted them to turning a tennis camp into the setting for a grisly slasher, shaping a central queer romance amidst all the carnage, and taking inspiration from surprising sources through films Bring It On and Showgirls.
Shudder
Nikias Chryssos (Director)
Phantasmag: What was your relationship with the horror genre like growing up?
Nikias Chryssos: I don’t know why, but a lot of the films that influenced me as a kid were horror-ish. One of the earliest I remember was King Kong, and then one night at eight years old when I was sick and couldn’t go to school, my parents allowed me to watch The Fearless Vampire Killers. That’s still such a cool film. It has this mixture of humour, spookiness, and a bit of campiness. Then I remember seeing Evil Dead II and reading a text about how the film was closer to German Romanticism than a usual horror film. And that was the first time that I discovered horror films could have another layer that I wasn’t aware of before.
Another thing that left a big impression on me was A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 [The Dream Master]. I watched it in a cinema in Greece, because you could watch films there as a kid that you couldn’t in Germany. Then I was reading Stephen King around the ages of 12 to 15. These were phases, and my film taste kept developing, but there’s something about a certain type of horror movie that gives you the freedom to tell crazy stories in visually interesting ways. That has always stuck with me.
P: Tell me a bit about where the seed of this idea came from. First of all, why tennis?
NC: I was fascinated by this contrast of a beautiful academy with something very dark and nasty brooding underneath. And then tennis requires such a specific mindset. You’re battling only one other player, and there’s no physical contact, but it can be very cruel, and people play mind games. Then also the aesthetics of the game: the sounds, the court, the dresses.
Director Nikias Chryssos. Photo: Vikto Richardsson.
P: I was thinking about movies like Suspiria and Black Swan when I was watching it. Were there any foundational inspirations for Bloody Tennis in terms of the style or visuals?
NC: For sure, Suspiria and also other Argento films like Phenomena, which is about this boarding school in Switzerland with those crazy insects. I didn’t even think about that [connection to Bloody Tennis], because we have the leeches. Those two films were big influences. Then films like Mean Girls and Bring It On, where you have these teenage interactions, were important too, and also Showgirls because it’s so over-the-top. The fighting against each other to try and make it and that over-the-top acting [informed the film]. People often have a problem with that unhinged style, but I think there’s something to it, you know? There’s an energy behind it.
P: Why was it important for you to have that queer romance in the film?
NC: As a boarding school or an academy, this is already a heated environment. Because it’s so physical, they’re away from home, and apart from being young athletes with this dream to become professional, they’re also just young people at a certain age. For me, it was important that love could grow in that environment, and it felt quite organic that an erotic or a loving relationship would form there. But then it is immediately interrupted by the academy, which asks you to suppress all that and sacrifice all these things.
Elina Löwensohn (left) and Sandra Guldberg Kampp (right) in Bloody Tennis. Courtesy of Shudder.
P: I’ve heard the rumour about tennis strings being made from cat guts, but I wanted to know where you heard it and why you decided to put that in?
NC: It’s funny because I wrote the scene [where Fred (Vincent Romeo) disembowels a cat] when I thought it was an actual thing. Because it’s true that strings were made from animal guts, and musical instruments can still be made from animal intestines. When I saw it was just a rumour, I thought, Oh, but it’s a beautiful moment. He cannot kill a cow or something like that, you know? And it was also bringing in something kind of archaic and biological into this world, but also something that is disgusting underneath.
P: If you were programming a double feature with Bloody Tennis, what film would you want to screen?
NC: The films we mentioned already would all be quite good. But I think it could be La Residencia, which has a different title in English [The House That Screamed]. It’s a boarding school-type of film that’s a bit less known than Suspiria, for example, and it’s very well-made and quite nasty in the way the residents treat each other, where there’s also a dark secret to this academy.
Lucie Zhang (left), Tracy Gotoas (middle), and Helena Zengel (right) in Bloody Tennis. Courtesy of Shudder.
Sandra Guldberg Kampp (“Sophie”)
Phantasmag: What attracted you to this project?
Sandra Guldberg Kampp: It’s a wild one. It was so different, and I was really interested in learning tennis, because I had never played before. And the mix of genres was really intriguing to me: putting tennis in a horror movie was something I had never seen before, and I wanted to be a part of it.
P: Speaking of learning tennis scenes, what was the preparation like for that? It’s a very physical role.
SGK: Definitely. I started training two months before, here in Denmark, and then all of us girls had a tiny boot camp together before we started shooting. Obviously, you can’t learn tennis in a couple months. That wouldn’t be realistic at all. But I was working out quite a lot and trying to compensate with the physicality, with being fit enough that I would at least look the part. Then I was really focusing on the movement, just hitting the ball and getting the timing right.
P: You mentioned the boot camp with your co-stars. Your relationships with them in the film are very messy, navigating friendship, romance, and betrayal. How did you build that dynamic together?
SGK: We were shooting on Gran Canaria, so we were all in the same hotel and isolated from the world. We met each other all there and had our little tennis boot camp, which was wonderful. We had a week of prep before we started shooting, where Nikias chose to take me and have these individual rehearsals with all the girls. That was incredibly helpful, just to paint out what kind of relationship there would be between each of us going forward.
P: What were your initial conversations with Nikias like? What were the main things that he highlighted for you?
SGK: To be honest, the first thing I was kind of trying to challenge him on was: Why tennis? And he gave me a very good answer. He was like, ‘First of all, it’s a very elegant sport, a very beautiful one, which is a huge contrast to horror. And then second of all, it’s a very solitary sport.’ You can play doubles, of course, but you’re so far away from your opponent, and you’re all alone on your end of the court. It goes on for hours, and it’s super mentally challenging.
P: Amidst the blood, and vomit, and body horror, there’s a very passionate love story between Sophie and Bana (Tracy Gotoas) as well. What was it like bringing the queer romance to life?
SGK: It was wonderful. Tracy is absolutely amazing, and we had a lot of fun with it. It was so nice to show that side of the experience, because it’s very human in such an extreme environment to gravitate towards some safety so you can feel seen and vulnerable. Because frankly, for Sophie, there's no place like that for her anywhere. Everything's competitive, and if you're bad, you die — which she doesn't know at first, but she doesn't wanna go home. It's extreme, and that's a huge part of why this romance happens.
Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp) falls for her competition, Bana (Tracy Gotoas)
P: What was the most challenging scene for you, and what was the most fun?
SGK: The most fun scene was hanging upside down from the bridge, being in this harness and wrapped in this tennis net, this tennis cocoon. As for the most challenging, some scenes were disgusting to shoot, like eating the heart and taking out the guts. And for some reason, they thought it was a brilliant idea to put all the eating scenes in two days. So I was just eating and eating, and all that juice was quite filling as well.
P: What was that made of?
SGK: Beetroot, I think. It was quite delicious, but when you drink 10 glasses in one day, it gets to be a lot.
P: Shooting in such a beautiful, single location, what was your favourite memory from the set?
SGK: I remember I met Juliana [Vieira-Guerra] for the first time, and we went on a little adventure around the place. We found this orange tree, and we were so excited about it we started eating them. It was nice to have that cosy vibe instead of all the pressure and intensity the house brings into the film itself. And really, you forget when you’re shooting how much of a privilege it is to have one location. It’s so nice to know the place and come back to it. It was a hotel and it had a pool, so the cast and crew would sometimes go for a swim if there was time.
P: Sounds like the shoot was gross and fun.
SGK: Yes. Very gross and fun.
P: If you were programming a double feature with this film, what movie would you pair with Bloody Tennis and why?
SGK: If you’re not good with horror, I would do a Winnie the Pooh movie so you can calm down. After watching something too scary, I often have to go watch a cartoon to feel okay.
Bloody Tennis is streaming on Shudder from this Friday, September 25th.