28 Sporty Horror Movies to Watch Instead of (or in addition to) the 2024 Summer Olympics

Horror Movies Relating to Summer Olympic Events

Fatal Games (1984)

Sports: Gymnastics, Track & Field, Swimming

Fatal Games might be the best overall representation of the Olympics in a horror movie. As a group of future Olympic hopefuls in various sports prepare for a national competition, they begin dying one-by-one at the hands of a mysterious killer whose weapon of choice is a javelin. Fatal Games takes a whodunit-style approach to its slasher formula, making it a decently entertaining movie for hardcore fans of cheap slashers.

Under Paris (2024)

Sport: Triathlon

Under Paris is the perfect companion piece to the 2024 Olympics. Though the movie doesn’t take place during the summer Olympics, it does feature a triathlon which begins in the Seine river, and ends with a deadly attack by sharks. At the Olympics in Paris, the swimming portion of the triathlon event will also take place in the Seine. However, instead of killer sharks, real-life Olympic swimmers will be more concerned with the notoriously—and dangerously—polluted waters of the Seine. Though swimming in the river has been banned for around 100 years, cleanup efforts have reportedly made the waters safe. Let’s hope so.

Graduation Day (1981)

Sport: Track & Field

High-school track star Laura Ramstead dies immediately after crossing the finish line of a race. Her sister, Anne, arrives in town a couple of months later, and almost immediately members of Laura’s track team start dying at the hands of a gloved killer. Is the killer Anne, getting revenge on the team for letting her sister die? Or is it the coach of the track team, a man with an aggressive coaching style that he might be taking too far? Or could someone else be slaughtering the students?

The Last House on the Left (2009)

Sport: Swimming

In the original The Last House on the Left from 1972, Mari Collingwood is a fairly typical teenager who could be best described as a hippie, and her trusting nature gets her into deadly trouble. In the remake from 2009, Mari is a competitive swimmer who, when attacked by Krug and his gang, attempts to escape by swimming across a lake. Mari is a fast swimmer, but can she outswim a bullet?

Final Destination 5 (2011)

Sport: Gymnastics

The invisible hand of Death returns in Final Destination 5 to claim the lives of a new group of victims. One of those victims is Candice. Candice is a gymnast, and Death visits her one day while she is practicing. Death continues to get creative with the kills, and Candice’s demise is loaded with fakeouts and tension-building suspense. But even as drawn-out as the sequence is, the ending never fails to feel surprisingly sudden and grotesque.

Climax (2018)

Sport: Breaking

Full disclosure: Climax doesn’t actually contain any scenes of breaking. It does, however, prominently feature other styles of street dancing including voguing, krumping, and waacking. So, part of the reason why Climax is on this list is because horror movies featuring break dancing as a major part of the plot are incredibly rare. Another reason is because seeing breaking as a new Olympic event in 2024 is exciting, and maybe it could lead to other forms of dance being added in the future. But if the breaking competition in Paris ends up like the nightmare of violence and horror seen in Climax, all hope for more Olympic dance categories will be extinguished.

Blood Creek (2009)

Sport: Equestrian

Blood Creek has a good idea for a new Olympic equestrian event: horse resurrection. To compete in the event you’ll probably need ancient Viking magic like the ageless Nazi occultist (played by Michael Fassbender) who is mystically trapped on a West Virginian farm in Blood Creek. And if you do get the magic, you better hope that two brothers (played by Henry Cavill and Dominic Purcell) don’t try to kill you and stop your evil plans. Blood Creek is weird, but it’s pretty good, and the horse resurrected by the evil Nazi occultist might be the best part.

Mirror Mirror (1990)

Sport: Water Polo

Megan is an outcast at her high school. She is teased and ostracized by most of her classmates. Her home life isn’t great either, but the new house she shares with her mother holds a secret. The old mirror in Megan’s room holds dark powers that are seductive, but they also claim a terrible price. As Megan is learning to control the power of the mirror, she uses it to attempt a measure of revenge against a classmate while taking part in a game of water polo.

Night of the Dribbler (1990)

Sport: Basketball

Canada doesn’t have a great record for basketball at the Olympics. In the Canadian horror movie Night of the Dribbler, Stanley doesn’t have a great chance at being the star basketball player that he desperately wants to be. He fails to make it onto his high-school’s squad, and shortly afterward members of the team are murdered one-by-one by a killer wearing a basketball mask. Coincidence?

Kick: Sudden Death (2015)

Sport: Soccer

Steve and Dan love soccer. They love it so much that they’re willing to spend a large amount of money to play on the pitch of a Premier League stadium while the facility is supposed to be closed. But after the match, they find that they can’t leave. Even worse, someone is playing a deadly game with them.

Girls With Balls (2019)

Sport: Volleyball

It’s a good thing the Olympics are in Paris in 2024. It means that the France women’s national volleyball team probably won’t have far to travel. That way there is only a slim chance they’ll end up like the French volleyball team in Girls With Balls. The team, named The Falcons, take an ill-advised detour in their van and are subsequently attacked by deranged locals in this backwoods horror flick. Can they stick together as a team and win like they do on the court?

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)

Sport: Tennis

What begins as a “friendly” game of tennis ends with revelations and important decisions. The Witches of Eastwick is about three female friends who don’t know the power they possess until a man comes between them. Though tennis takes up very little of the movie’s run time, the mixed-doubles tennis game is not only vital to the story, it’s also one of the most memorable scenes in the film.

Blades (1988)

Sport: Golf

If you ever wanted to watch a shark movie, but you prefer golf to sharks, then Blades is perfect for you. The horror-comedy Blades thoroughly parodies Jaws from beginning to end, with multiple specific scenes recreated. But instead of a shark attacking people at a beach, it’s about a sentient lawnmower that attacks people on a golf course. It’s actually quite a lot of fun.

Carnage Park (2016)

Sport: Shooting

There are multiple types of shooting events in the Olympics, and they all take place in controlled environments. In Carnage Park, a deranged sniper attempts to create a relatively controlled environment for his own type of sport shooting. Only, instead of targets, this sniper shoots people. And he’s not shooting for a gold medal. His trophies take the form of human ears and other grisly mementos.

The Host (2006)

Sport: Archery

Directed by Bong Joon-ho, The Host is a monster movie with deep themes about South Korea’s history and society. Among the small group of main characters is Nam-joo, a competitive archer who competes for her country. But now, Nam-joo has a different reason to raise her bow. Her niece has been taken by a monster, so she and her family do everything they can to rescue the young girl while the government remains ineffective.

Wild Eyed and Wicked (2023)

Sport: Fencing

Lily is a fencing instructor whose life is in shambles. Haunted by the death of her mother and estranged from her father, Lily digs into her and her mother’s past. When confronting the literal evil in her family, Lily’s fencing skills might not be enough for her to fight back with. She’s going to have to learn how to wield a different kind of sword to battle her demons.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Sport: Cycling

In the Mouth of Madness is filled with bizarre and unsettling imagery. One sequence that is sure to stick with viewers involves a cyclist and a long drive at night. Though it’s a small part of the movie, it’s one that many people remember well for how subtly scary it is. It takes place on a dark road that is essentially a black void, and the repeated visions of an increasingly creepy man on a bicycle foreshadow the horrors to come.

Gangnam Zombie (2023)

Sport: Taekwondo

Hyeon-seok is a former taekwondo champion who is currently working for a slimy boss as part of a small social-media production team. Making terrible videos isn’t Hyeon-seok’s true calling. His best skills are in other areas, and those skills are put to the test when zombies invade the office building where he works. Will his taekwondo expertise be enough to save himself and his crush/coworker Min-jeong from becoming a part of the running undead horde?

Train (2008)

Sport: Wrestling

If you’re overseas for an athletic competition, it’s important to have a thorough travel plan. It’s also important that you don’t deviate from that plan. That’s the hard lesson learned by a wrestling team from the United States who board the wrong train while competing in Europe. As the train moves along the track, the wrestlers and their coaches disappear one at a time, victims of a devious and deadly conspiracy taking place on the locomotive.

The Survivor (2021)

Sport: Boxing

Though it isn’t a horror movie, the events portrayed in The Survivor are absolutely horrific. The film is a biopic focusing on Harry Haft, a survivor of World War II Nazi concentration camps who competed in boxing matches in which the loser was often executed. Haft briefly became a professional boxer in the United States after the end of the war, and in The Survivor his time as a prisoner is told through flashbacks while we watch his continued struggles in the late 1940s.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988)

Sport: Weight Lifting

Never fall asleep while lifting weights. This is good advice any time, but when Freddy Krueger has been killing your friends, it is essential advice. For Debbie in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, falling asleep while performing bench presses makes it too easy for the creative killer. Snapping both of Debbie’s elbows by pressing her barbell down is only the beginning of her grotesque death.

Shredder Orpheus (1990)

Sport: Skateboarding

Low on budget and high on style, Shredder Orpheus puts a mythological spin on the world of skateboarding. When the love of Orpheus’s life, Eurydice, is kidnapped by Hades, he must use magic and music to skate his way into “hell” to rescue her. Considering that the Olympics began in ancient Greece, and the legendary hero who inspired Shredder Orpheus is also of Greek origin, and skateboarding is once again an Olympic event in 2024, could there be a better celebration of the Olympics than Shredder Orpheus?

Blood Surf (2000)

Sport: Surfing

In Blood Surf, a group of thrill-seekers participate in the making of a documentary about a new kind of extreme sport: blood surfing. It’s basically just surfing, but the water is chummed so that the entire area is filled with hungry sharks. This isn’t a shark movie though. The documentary crew attracts sharks, sure, but what they didn’t expect is that they also lure in a gigantic crocodile that is even hungrier than the toothy fish.

Dead Calm (1989)

Sport: Sailing

The sailing in Dead Calm isn’t exactly the same kind of sailing seen in the Olympics, but that’s a good thing. While on a sailing vacation meant to help ease some of the grief they’re feeling over a death in the family, Rae (Nicole Kidman) and John (Sam Neill) take aboard Hughie (Billy Zane) who escapes from a slowly sinking ship. Before long it is a race against time as John, on Hughie’s sinking schooner, follows his own yacht which has been commandeered by Hughie with Rae still onboard. So, in a small way, Dead Calm really is a little like an Olympic sailing race.

Deliverance (1972)

Sport: Canoeing

Could there be any other choice for a scary movie about canoeing? Deliverance is a terrifying depiction of a canoeing trip gone wrong. In the beginning, the river is an inviting escape from everyday life. But by the end, the flowing water is the only escape from the horrors four friends have endured.

Old (2021)

Sport: Climbing

As desperation mounts for a group of people stuck on a beach that causes them to age years in the span of hours, young—though recently younger—Kara (Eliza Scanlen) attempts to climb a rock wall to escape the sandy deathtrap. It doesn’t go well for her.

Missing (2021)

Sport: Table Tennis

The Japanese crime thriller Missing is a movie about a serial killer, but at its heart it is a story about a daughter’s search for her missing father. Table tennis isn’t really on anyone’s mind for most of the movie, but there is a pivotal and heartbreaking scene that uses the sport to show the state of the bond between young Kaede and her father Satoshi. It’s an emotional scene that makes table tennis more than just an activity. It’s a metaphor.

Thanksgiving (2023)

Sport: Trampoline

When you think of the summer Olympics, the Thanksgiving holiday is probably one of the last things that comes to mind. Regardless, Thanksgiving will always be associated with trampolines. Partway through the film, a tryst between a coach and a cheerleader begins with some suggestive trampolining. It ends in bloodshed and death.

Further Reading

• Best Escape Room Movies
• Best Battle Royale Movies
• Survival Movies About Being Trapped in Strange Places
• Scary Horror Movies About Travel
• Summer Horror Movies
• French Horror Movies