Ever since I first saw the trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s new movie Challengers starring Zendaya, Mike Faist, and Josh O’Connor was one of the movies I was most looking forward to this year. It’s safe to say that it did not disappoint.

This movie has everything you could ask from a sports movie, but you could also say it has nothing to do with sports at all which is interesting. It’s a movie about two friends Patrick Zweig (portrayed by Josh O’Connor) and Art Donaldson (portrayed by Mike Faist) who are young tennis players who are up and coming who both have a crush on young tennis sensation Tashi Duncan (portrayed by Zendaya).

Throughout this movie we see these two men fight over Tashi trying to be the one who ends up with her, and it makes for such an exciting story and even has you on the edge of your seat by the end of it.

The movie starts off in the future 13 years after they first meet Tashi, already showing us who she ends up with in the end, and their story is told through flashbacks while both Patrick and Art are in a tennis final facing each other. This was one of my favorite things that the movie did, as seeing the story told through one single tennis match that spans the whole movie made for such interesting storytelling.

Every time someone would get ahead in being with Tashi in the past, they would win a set in the future game and it was just so unique seeing the story this way because it was almost like THEY were the ones thinking about the past and using it to power them through this game.

The score in this movie is amazing, they play loud house music throughout the whole movie. They would play the music even over conversations sometimes making the viewers try to pay more attention to what our characters were saying and it also felt like the music itself was the fuel for most of these conversations which was interesting. I couldn’t stop thinking about the music after I watched the movie so it worked.

This is definitely a must watch movie as it’s going to be one of the sexiest, fun, and most talked about this year.

When asked how they felt about the movie an NECC student, Lucas Bermudez says, “Camp meets obsession, lust, and tennis in a way only Luca Guadagnino could portray.