Oh! A Phantom All My Life
2025 · 10m · USA
Directed by Ellena Eshraghi
Genres: coming-of-age, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, surreal, theatrical
A woman raised on the lie that her evil twin was abandoned at an amusement park finds a cryptic VHS commercial that triggers blood cravings. Coming-of-age, but coded in vampirism and parental deceit.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Vampirism as inherited bad parenting — finally, a metaphor that earns its fangs. The maximalist production design is the cherry on top of a film already drunk on its own logic.
A haunted infomercial triggering vampiric memory? Eshraghi's twin-swap mythology has the thrift-store Cronenberg texture I keep hoping more young directors will commit to. Conceptually rich, even if execution may not match.
Routing the evil-twin-abandoned-at-the-amusement-park mythology through a haunted VHS commercial is a great hook — vampirism as coming-of-age coding, with the parental-deception twist (they left the wrong twin) earning its surrealism. Eshraghi directing, starring, and casting family suggests the personal stakes match the formal weirdness.
Reviews
A coming-of-age reflection coded in darkness and fantasy.