Thai debut A Useful Ghost turns a haunted vacuum into political allegory

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature, A Useful Ghost, follows a grieving widower whose deceased wife returns in the form of a household vacuum cleaner, a conceit the New York Times selected as a Critic’s Pick. The film opens with the self-described Academic Ladyboy buying a vacuum to banish dust; when the machine begins coughing up its contents he summons a repairman and learns that haunted appliances are a growing problem in Thailand’s dust-plagued factories, where deceased workers activated by grief have been returning to sabotage equipment.

The widow Nat reappears as a sleek vacuum (designed by Sim Hao Jie) and, despite police, Buddhist ritual and disapproving relatives, the reunited couple resume marital relations to the horror of March’s widowed mother, Suman. What begins as a sad-sweet sex comedy broadens into supernatural mystery and political allegory as the screenplay — by the director, who also teaches film theory — gradually darkens.

Nat gains the ability to discern the dreams of dissidents and can be turned into a government’s "useful ghost," a development that makes the film’s imagery more potent and its spirits’ intentions more menacing while keeping a buoyant, often hilarious tone. In press notes, Boonbunchachoke says Thailand is "full of ghosts," and the director frames the shape-shifting movie as an ode to memories inconvenient to rulers.

Key Topics

Culture, A Useful Ghost, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, Thailand, Davika Hoorne, Sim Hao Jie