Directed by Nikias Chryssos – Screenplay by Nikias Chryssos.
Ahead of its streaming release on Shudder in the US this Friday, September 25th, Nikias Chryssos’ Bloody Tennis had its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest in recent days. It went quite well for Chryssos, as he won the festival’s Best Director prize in the horror category. For my remote coverage of the festival, I also had the opportunity to check out Chryssos’ picture. I was quite intrigued by this film given its cast, which includes a Danish lead actor and a supporting role for a beloved Croatian-Danish character actor. Chryssos’ film shows a lot of ambition, but it is a little bit of a mixed bag. Despite certain shortcomings, I had a pretty solid time with the film, and I thought many of its horror images worked quite well.
Nikias Chryssos’ Bloody Tennis follows Sophie (played by Sandra Guldberg Kampp), a Detroit-born American aspiring tennis pro, who is accepted into a remote elite tennis academy in Europe run by Mary Tyrone (played by Elina Löwensohn), a demanding figure who wants her academy members to connect with their primal selves, feel the energy, and grow. It is a competitive environment, with many other young female tennis players all working to get to the top. Early in the film, they learn that they will all take part in a knock-out style tournament, where the losers are thrown out of the academy, and the eventual winner will be awarded a wildcard to a world-renowned and prestigious tennis tournament. However, there’s more to this tennis academy. Tyrone is obsessed with leeches, cats go missing, and we soon start to realize that being thrown out of the academy isn’t the only consequence of losing in this tournament.
Bloody Tennis reminded me of a great many films, including Suspiria, Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness, Justin Tipping’s HIM, Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon, and Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers. While it isn’t as heavily stylized as those films, Chryssos borrows elements from all of them to make this ‘eurohorror’ feature what it is. Chryssos’ film is at its best when it rests on images of its most disturbing horror designs. Like seeing the images of Vincent Romeo’s assistant character (designed with a distinctive bowl cut) prepare strings for the custom-made tennis rackets or seeing what happens to someone who tries to get out of the academy. It’s quite dark, and Chryssos’ film clearly relishes leaning into the dark comedy of it all. For instance, Chryssos has some fun with deliberately very over-the-top darkly comedic injuries late in the film. Almost all of the horror images work well, with the one caveat being whenever the film makes use of digital effects for blood, which just doesn’t look good. This looks especially off in the film’s pre-title card scene, and it sort of wrong-foots you as a viewer. Because the film’s horror aspects are generally much, much better than that throughout the film. I will also say that the jump-scares could use some build-up and a more controlled tightening of tension, as they fall relatively flat here.
So, that covers the ‘blood’ element of the title. But what about the tennis? Well, although the competitive aspect of the film is very much what the film is built around, it doesn’t really seem like the tennis itself is what Chryssos cares about. He takes an economic approach to the matches themselves, insofar as the tennis matches are relatively repetitive due to them mostly being comprised of slow-motion shots of the tennis players’ feet on the court and (often, if not always) hand-held shots of the female players striking a ball with a racket. Only rarely do we actually see the tennis ball move from side to side on the court. I also think it should be said that having the film be built around a tournament structure adds watchability and energy to the film that Chryssos uses well, even though the film is unevenly paced. Like how certain horror elements are deliberately over-the-top, some suspension of disbelief is also needed to believe the actual prize for the tournament, as it seems quite far-fetched. But I’d venture the guess that Chryssos doesn’t care about the actual tennis as much as he cares about the competitive aspect and what it brings out in the competitors and those running the academy.
As I mentioned earlier, I was particularly interested in this film because of the cast. As a Dane, I must say that watching and hearing Zlatko Buric yell out in a certain way, or be threatening to someone, is almost like comfort food to certain generations of Danes. Like many, I grew up watching him in films like Refn’s Pusher trilogy, and even though his part isn’t sizable in Bloody Tennis, I had fun watching him be the loud and demanding tennis coach. I was also curious to see how Sandra Guldberg Kampp, who I first saw in Jeanette Nordahl’s Kød & Blod, would handle this leading role. The Danish actress takes on the challenge of playing an American, and she does give it her all, but she can’t fully rid herself of the tendency to soften certain sounds with her Danish accent here. She has also taken on a part that asks her to communicate a lot of her character through interiority. Kampp, with her distinctive facial features, communicates a lot of her character growth with her gaze. Her character is nicknamed ‘Bambi,’ and she does properly hit the look of an ambitious, curious, and slightly naïve character in the early goings, before Kampp gets to put on a more assertive and ruthless gaze.
In addition to Buric, Elina Löwensohn and Vincent Romeo play the remaining characters in charge of things at the academy. They play their parts solidly and, along with sounds of female, witchy wailing, lend the film the right qualities so as to land on the right atmosphere for the film. But it must also be said that their wickedness is so overt that it quickly makes the film devoid of much mystery or suspense. There is a sense of inevitability after a while, which is a shame.
On the whole, I have mixed feelings about Nikias Chryssos’ Bloody Tennis. It is an appropriately atmospheric and competently made horror film with solid horror imagery and a committed cast. But the uneven pace, as well as the repetitive and inevitable aspects of the plot, does hurt the film somewhat. Nonetheless, if you can suspend disbelief in key areas and if you enjoy the horror-infused competitive aspect of the film, then there’s some entertainment to be found here.
5.5 out of 10
– Review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
