A Useful Ghost isn’t your usual ghost story – in fact its greatest gift is that there’s not a single thing ‘usual’ about it
Was there ever a moment when writer / director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke thought maybe he was biting off more than he could chew for his debut feature film A Useful Ghost? Blending horror, sci-fi and black comedy with strong political messaging while ensuring the film’s artful intentions are front and centre does seem a mammoth task, but when the lead star is a haunted vacuum cleaner, maybe it’s best to sit back and embrace the absurd, saving the questions for the end, once all is remarkably revealed.
When a self-proclaimed Academic Ladyboy (Wisarut Homhuan) has had enough with dust particles interrupting his regular breathing, he orders a vacuum cleaner, only to discover it, too, is coughing. Soon enough he’s captivated by Krong (Wanlop Rungkumjad), someone he believes was sent to fix the literally cursed vacuum, or at least spirit it away, but instead tells him the story of the haunted factory; it turns out there are a lot of appliances harbouring past lives. One such appliance – a very sleek and sophisticated red vacuum – houses the ghost of Nat (Davika Hoorne), beloved wife of March (Wisarut Himmarat), who was killed by respiratory failure. March’s mother, Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon) owns the appliance factory and really wishes her workers would stop dying of dust.
What appears to be a love story between March and his dead vacuum-cleaner wife is immediately and utterly bizarre as the two become intimate whenever they can. And what then seems like a comedy swiftly becomes a political statement on classism and capitalism as Nat’s goal shifts from pleasuring her husband to endearing herself to Suman by promising to clean up the factory deaths getting in the way of the family business. Meanwhile, ghosts, a Buddhist monk pronounces, exist for two reasons: because they are remembering or they are being remembered, and with that A Useful Ghost becomes a tribute to the erased LGBTQI+ in Thailand’s history.
Nominated at festivals around the world for Best Picture – including winning a Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes – A Useful Ghost attempts and achieves quite a lot, pushing boundaries both categorically and thematically, all the while paying close attention to filmic style and beauty. Pasit Tandaechanurat’s cinematography is pretty special, with exceptional focus on colour saturation, and the deadpan acting (I’m particularly thinking of a scene with March’s aunties and uncles) works a treat. Very Yorgos Lanthimos-esque, but never derivative, Boonbunchachoke’s got the goods. This film has both critical success and cult classic written all over it.
Reviewed by Heather Taylor-Johnson
A Useful Ghost is screening as part of the Adelaide Film Festival.
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