‘Foundation’ Star Officially Goes Dark in Brutal First Look at New Horror Film [Exclusive]

Image via Shudder /Courtesy Everett Collection Published Sep 15, 2026, 11:00 AM EDT Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys. Sign in to your Collider account Sports and horror are a rare pairing, yet Fantastic Fest is about to give genre fans their second combination of the two in as many years. In 2025, Him took the field, mixing football and the macabre in a story about an up-and-coming quarterback being invited to train with an aging superstar at his isolated compound, where the methods employed are more than a little sinister. Neither critics nor audiences were big fans of the film in the end, though, despite interesting ideas and strong performances from the starring duo of Tyriq Withers and Marlon Wayans. Now, Bloody Tennis will attempt to take the niche subgenre and serve up a winner in its North American premiere at the country's most prestigious event for genre filmmaking. As part of Collider's Exclusive Preview series, we're thrilled to share a new look at the brutal thriller that shows exactly where the title comes from. Bloody Tennis unfolds at a prestigious girls' tennis academy where, like Isaiah's compound in Him, violence is part of the regimen and only the hungriest, most cutthroat players will survive. At the center of the experience is Sophie (Sandra Guldberg Kampp), who is slowly exposed to the academy's extreme methods when she's enrolled over the summer. As she slowly builds bonds with her fellow young players, their circumstances grow from strange, like being constantly served bizarre red, chunky smoothies, to creepy, with leeches applied to help performance. Getting further into the program and getting better only gives the Academy more hold over Sophie, and the push to reach greatness at all costs only grows. Our exclusive image shows Sophie observing the results of her training in the mirror. A large, bloody gash just below her eye leaves streaks of crimson down the left side of her face, as she looks detached and borderline unfazed by the damage. The academy encourages a singular commitment to winning on another level, where bodily harm and sacrifice are viewed not as problems to correct, but signs of commitment to be rewarded. It's an illustration of the key behind Bloody Tennis' satire about the modern world that glorifies and expects the grind. Buying into the academy's logic won't just cost Sophie her own blood, sweat, and tears, though. The cost of her ascension will be paid by the people around her, with whom she's experienced friendship, rivalry, and desire. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What Is Your Biggest Horror Nightmare? Elm Street · Chucky · Scream · The Conjuring Every great horror franchise is one very specific fear wearing a mask. One waits until you fall asleep. One makes certain nobody believes you. One is already inside your group of friends. And one is in the house with your family right now. Eight questions decide which of them was built for you. 😴Elm Street(Freddy Krueger) 🧸Chucky(Child's Play) 📞Scream(Ghostface) 🕯️The Conjuring(The Warren Files) FIND YOUR NIGHTMARE → 01 What actually frightens you, when you are honest about it? Every horror franchise is one fear, dressed up and handed a knife. ANot being able to switch my own mind off. BKnowing something is wrong and being told I imagined it. CFinding out somebody close to me is not who I thought. DSomething getting into my home and refusing to leave. NEXT QUESTION → 02 It is very late and you are alone. What do you do? Everybody has a ritual for this. Yours says more than you think. AStay up. I would rather be exhausted than asleep. BCheck the thing that moved, twice, feeling ridiculous. CLock the door and work out who else is in the house. DLeave a light on in the hallway. I always have. NEXT QUESTION → 03 The first sign arrives. How do you react to it? There is always a warning. There is usually nobody listening. AI decide I am tired and imagining things. BI tell somebody, and they laugh at me. CI say nothing and start watching everyone closely. DI call the one person who would take it seriously. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How much of this do you think is your own fault? The best horror always leaves that question slightly open. AI let it in by not sleeping. It found the gap. BNone of it. I was right and nobody listened. CI trusted the wrong person. I should have known. DWe moved here. I brought my family into this. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What would actually keep you alive in a horror film? Somebody always survives. It is rarely the person you expect. AStubbornness. I simply refuse to go under. BBeing right early, and being loud about it. CKnowing the rules of the genre better than anyone. DFaith, and people who will not leave me alone in it. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Who do you want in the room with you? Almost nobody survives a horror film completely alone. ANobody. I have enough to worry about already. BOne person who believes me without needing proof. CA small group, and I would still watch all of them. DMy family. This was always about keeping them safe. NEXT QUESTION → 07 It is over. What do you carry out of it? Horror never really ends at the credits. It just stops filming. AI do not sleep properly now. I no longer expect to. BI trust my own judgment. That cost me something. CI never fully relax around other people again. DI know something is out there, and it knows my name. NEXT QUESTION → 08 The lights go off tonight. Which thought finds you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your nightmare. AThat I have to sleep eventually, and it is waiting. BThat it was real, and I am alone with knowing it. CThat the call is coming from somebody who knows me. DThat something is in the house with me right now. REVEAL MY NIGHTMARE → The Lights Just Went Out Your Nightmare Is…Four franchises, four completely different ways of getting underneath your skin. This is the one built out of your particular fear, why it works so well on you, and what it would leave behind. Elm StreetYour nightmare does not wait outside the door. It waits for you to close your eyes, which you are going to have to do eventually, because nobody has ever won that particular argument. Freddy is horror's cruellest idea: a threat that lives in the one place you cannot guard, cannot lock, and cannot avoid forever. You are the person who lies awake running through it again. Your own mind is where this starts and where it does the damage. These films understood exhaustion as a horror engine. The kids on Elm Street do not lose because they are weak. They lose because they are tired. You can lock every door in the house. You still have to sleep. ChuckyYour nightmare is not really the thing itself. It is the face of the person you tell, and the way they decide, very kindly, that you have imagined all of it. Chucky works precisely because he is absurd. That is the trap: the more accurately you describe him, the less anybody is going to believe you. You know the specific loneliness of being right while everyone around you is being reasonable at you. The franchise is at its best when the adults in the room are the real obstacle, and you have met those adults. By the time somebody finally believes you, you will have handled most of it on your own. ScreamYour nightmare has your number, knows your name, and has almost certainly been inside your house before. The worst part is that you already know them. Scream is the only one of these where the monster takes the mask off and turns out to be somebody who was at the party. You watch people. You notice the small wrong notes in a conversation, and you have never entirely been able to switch that off. The franchise made the rules of horror part of the plot, which means the survivors are the ones paying attention. You would be paying attention. Everybody is a suspect, including the person who just offered to walk you home. The ConjuringYour nightmare is not really about you. It is about the people asleep down the hall, and the fact that you are the one who moved them all here. The Conjuring films are domestic horror. The house, the family, the perfectly ordinary room that quietly stops feeling ordinary. Your fear is protective rather than personal. What frightens you is failing somebody, not being hurt yourself. This is the one franchise where belief is the weapon. The people who come through it are the ones who are not alone and refuse to be. Whatever is here did not come for you. It came for the household, and you are the one standing in the hallway. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ Who Will Hit the Court for 'Bloody Tennis'? Kampp takes the court in Bloody Tennis after most recently reprising her role as Thalis for one episode in Season 3 of the Apple TV sci-fi series, Foundation. She's joined by a talented international cast including Zlatko Burić, who's had a busy year between Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, Wonder Man, and The Bride!, alongside Elina Löwensohn, Tracy Gotoas, Helena Zengel, Lily Taïeb, Juliana Vieira Guerra, Lucie Zhang, and Vincent Romeo. Behind the camera, meanwhile, was writer-director Nikias Chryssos with a much bloodier follow-up to their music drama Rave On, released last year. The sports horror feature earned solid marks from the few critics who saw its premiere at the Locarno Film Festival, but Shudder felt confident enough in its blend of blood, stomach-churning violence, and emotional coming-of-age elements to purchase the rights to distribute it starting September 25, even before then. First, Bloody Tennis makes its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest on September 20. The festival begins this week on September 17 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas. Check out our exclusive image above and stay tuned here at Collider for more new looks throughout the rest of the week as we gear up for the event's 21st edition. More information on each entry can be found on the official Fantastic Fest film guide. Release Date September 25, 2026 Runtime 94 minutes Director Nikias Chryssos Writers Nikias Chryssos Producers Maximilian Leo Cast Sandra Guldberg Kampp Sophie