With Halloween just around the corner, you’ll need to be fit to outrun those mask wearing slasher bad guys. Nina Romain looks at gore in sports on the big screen in time for some festive viewing.
With Jordan Peele-produced horror Him (2025) recently distributed, sports violence is back on the big screen. Peele’s feature opens with an “injury detail” warning, as the audience see the hero, young sportsman Cam (Tyriq Withers), get a head injury that involves huge metal stitches in his skull.
From then on, he meets a slightly-disturbing trainer, Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) who promises that if he embraces some no-holds-barred sports training, he will win. Cam then undergoes violent training in a sport dangerous enough to ensure the players wearing protective gear on the pitch are still injured badly enough to end their careers. Things get worse from there on, as Peele oversees Cam descending into a sports hellscape involving vicious injuries, as he begins to compete to cause maximise damage to the opposing team in order to win.
Other sports/horror hybrids include the British football-based violence of Green Street Hooligans (2005). The less serious Australian comedy-slasher I Know How Many Runs You Made Last Summer (2008) sees a cricket-obsessed serial killer armed with stumps adorned with steel spikes, and a cricket ball studded with six-inch nails.
Sports drama The Wrestler (2008) paints a more realistic picture of sports-related injuries in a professional’s later life and how it can ruin the person’s life. Mickey’s Rourke’s character Randy “The Ram” Robinson looks at the results of a violent professional life, and mentions the injuries that have left Robinson like “an old broken-down piece of meat”.
So what’s the attraction of sports movies in the horror genre, and are they reflecting or glorifying violence? Some sports are by their very definition violent, as in boxing, the only sport aiming to deliberately do as much damage as you can to an opponent.
Psychologist Donna Dawson, specialising in Personality and Behaviour and member of the Dracula Society, says: “Violent sports arouses the same level of adrenalin in the viewer as does a horror film – the same anticipation, sensory arousal and mental preparation.”
She adds: “Both create the ‘fight or flight’ reaction at its most extreme. Also, the likely bloody aftermath of each genre also resemble each other, so they have a lot in common.”
Philip James McGoldrick, director and co-founder of EMC Productions’ mixed martial arts (MMA) feature Tramp, focusses on British-Polish MMA fighter Grazyna “The Tramp” Jarzynowska, and takes a no-gloss look at sports injuries.
Does he feel that his feature, which includes kickboxer and Muay Thai champion Ruqsana Begum and three-time world champion Ruth Nelson, glamourises violence in sport movies or just reflects it?
McGoldrick mentions that he believes his film takes an “unflinching” look at injuries including “post-fight injuries – cuts, bruises, and black eyes”.
He explains:
“[We] aimed for a high level of realism [involving] casting professional fighters in key roles and choreographing the action with MMA experts. Tramp is an emotional journey; the violence exists on the periphery, serving as a lens through which to heighten tension and reveal deeper aspects of our characters’ struggle.”
Last century saw a (fictitious) spectator sport played in the dystopian future – of 2018 – in Rollerball, 1975, and remade in 2002. In this world, viewers “dream they’re great Rollerballers. They dream they have muscles, they bash in faces.” So is the future of sport on the big screen, bleeding on the field for the viewers’ entertainment?
