‘A Useful Ghost’ review: A haunted vacuum cleaner collides with Thailand’s recent past

Dir/scr: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke. Thailand/France/Singapore. 2025. 130 mins.

If Yorgos Lanthimos relocated to Thailand his next film might look something like critic, teacher, writer and director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost, a deadpan comedy-drama ghost romance about grief, reconnection, social barriers and the sins of one’s past. Making its world premiere during Critics’ Week at Cannes, A Useful Ghost tells the absurdly funny story of a grieving husband reuniting with his deceased wife on a supernatural and electronic level before taking a more serious detour into an exploration of national guilt and trauma. Ratchapoom’s feature debut is a visually ambitious and thematically layered big swing that’s as polarising as it is creative.

A big swing that’s as polarising as it is creative

A Useful Ghost is almost certainly headed for a long life on the festival circuit in Asia Pacific where star Davika Hoorne has a solid fan base and is still recognised for her role in Thailand’s highest grossing film ever, 2013’s Pee Mak. The film should also find traction with art house distributors in the region as well as the very select European and North American markets who have enjoyed the formally-challenging Thai giants such as Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul in the past.

Recognised for making waves at Locarno with Red Aninsri; Or, Tiptoeing On The Still Trembling Berlin Wall in 2020, about a transgender spy undercover as a cis man trying to get close to a political activist, Ratchapoom wades into similar star-crossed lover territory, this time lacing it with political grace notes. Deliberately paced (it could bear shedding a few minutes from its languid runtime) and often mesmerising for its quiet tone, A Useful Ghost is assured in its storytelling and further marks Ratchapoom as a filmmaker to watch.

The action begins in Bangkok, with self-declared Academic Ladyboy (Wisarut Homhuan) dealing with dust pollution that is causing widespread respiratory problems. He buys a high-powered vacuum cleaner to get his home office under control, which he soon discovers is haunted. The handsome and mysterious Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad) arrives to service the appliance, but winds up sitting with Ladyboy all day, relating stories about the factory the machine came from.

The home appliances manufacturer is a family business run by Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon), and her youngest son March (Wisarut Himmarat). March is grieving the death of his pregnant wife, Nat (Davika), whose ghost has possessed another vacuum model. Krong explains the appliance possessions began when a worker passed away, believing the factory was negligent in protecting its staff. The damage the ghosts are doing to the business makes March’s family resistant to accepting Nat’s spectral reincarnationwhen it happens, but the couple’s reunion finally wins everyone’s favour when she vanquishes the more disruptive spirits and putting the factory on the road to recovery.

But when powerful government minister Dr Paul (Gandhi Wasuvitchayagit) asks for Nat’s help with banishing his own ghosts, it leads to a moral dilemma for the human-ghost couple.

A Useful Ghost teems with absurdist humour that the cast plays entirely straight and which Ratchapoom directs without self-conscious winking. Nat’s debate as a vacuum with a nurse over visiting hours spirals into a tremendous bit of sketch comedy; the sting of the browbeating Suman takes from her family about her failures as a mother remains, even if it’s softened by some hilariously on-the-nose dialogue; it’s hard to infuse tension into fisticuffs between a vacuum and refrigerator.

The oddball humour lends the film its sweet and slightly tragic romantic undercurrents, yet Ratchapoom steadily seeds the script with just enough allusions to other ghosts whose rage is dominating. Many of those were impacted by Dr Paul and his cohorts in Thailand’s 2010 Red Shirt protests, violently put down by the military in mid-May of that year, and ultimately they add a low-key condemnation of a powerful, privileged class that would rather erase the past than reckon with it. 

In Ratchapoom’s world, that reckoning will be a gonzo one set to a discordantly chipper score by Chaibovon Seelookwar, complemented by Rasiguet Sookkarn’s (Ten Years Thailand), stark and sterile factory and hospital production design, and cinematographer Pasit Tandaechanurat’s lushly-captured natural surroundings, where the starkness feels welcoming, and a little melancholy.