A Useful Ghost | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review

Ghost in the Machine: Boonbunchachoke Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost

Spirits, in all their various forms, are an abiding fixture in Thai culture and folklore, represented in a complex spectrum of malignant and benevolent varieties. Two decades ago, Shutter (2004) became an international breakthrough, spawning an American remake and assisting in popularizing Thai horror cinema abroad. But there’s perhaps been nothing quite like Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s directorial debut A Useful Ghost, a complex, farcical rom-com about ghosts possessing home appliances struggling to remain connected to their loved ones. Framed by a gay tryst meet-cute, Boonbunchachoke delves into the tragic death of a young bride who returns in the form of a vacuum cleaner, much to the chagrin of her mother-in-law, who owns the factory where such domestic devices are manufactured. Bizarre but often poignant in its existential pondering on what motivates these disembodied spirits to remain behind, Boonbunchachoke mines the essence of eternal unfinished business.

The essence of haunting seems to take several forms in A Useful Ghost, which opens with a sculptor chiseling a mural by reimagining the eccentric tableaux of models utilized in the imagery. In the present day, the mural has been removed from the square where it was displayed for generations to make way for modern living spaces in an increasingly contemporized world. Damaged in the move, crumbling dust particles mingle together with the construction of vast new facades, and this constant bath of broken down detritus seems to be infecting those left behind.

“There is no progress without dust,” one character muses after a young man (Wisarut Homhuan) who is self-described as an academic ladyboy, calls to have his vacuum repaired, a recent purchase to combat the proliferation of dust in his apartment. Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad), a technician who arrives suspiciously fast, seems to share a mutual attraction with his client. It appears there’s nothing wrong with his appliance, but Krong asserts the vacuum is most likely haunted, and proceeds to relay the tragic tale of factory owner Suman (Apasiri Nithibon), a widow who took control of her husband’s company. When Tok (Kritten Thongmai), an employee dies tragically at work, his angry ghost haunts the factory, causing so much misery Suman loses her license. Suman’s miseries are far from over, however. Not only is her eldest son Mos (Katanyu Swangsri) gay (although happily married with a child), but her youngest son March (Witsarut Himmarat) has just lost his wife Nat (Davika Hoorne) and unborn child due to an illness she suffered caused by the dust.

However, Nat has returned in the form of a vacuum cleaner, whose abilities to suction also allows their physical chemistry to remain intact. Suman, along with her defunct company’s board of trustees, are unwilling to accept Nat in this new form. But it’s determined two scenarios allow for ghosts – either they exist because they remember or they are remembered by someone still alive. March is forced to undergo electroshock therapy to erase Nat from his mind, and Suman’s plan is almost successful until her dead daughter-in-law visits her dreams (in one of the film’s funniest but darkest asides). Realizing Nat has the capability to be a useful ghost, Suman employs her to enter the dreams of the factory employees to determine whose memory is allowing Tok to remain intact.

As A Useful Ghost eventually intersects the undead storylines of Krang and Nat, delving into sinister undertows, the film’s satirical elements devolve quickly, morphing into a classist struggle and sub-culture warfare traitorously lurking under the surface of the suggestion in the innocuous title. For what makes Nat useful to the living is how she can assist in dispelling those lost souls facing the same predicament. Eventually, she’s aligned with Suman, who, while among the living, has been forced to repress her own cultural ancestry, displayed in her wan attempts to utilize her own dialect. Communal vengeance, reminiscent of Mati Diop’s uprising of the possessing undead in Atlantics (2019), fashions an unpredictable finale hinting at how a tenuous power exists within the unstable realm of memory, each of us haunted by whatever’s residing there.

Reviewed on May 17th at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival (78th edition) – Critics’ Week. 130 Mins.

★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆