Attention, now Ratthapoom comes Bonbunchoke! As crazy as the name of the Thai director, as extravagant is also his ghostly feature film debut: In “A Useful Ghost” he misses the well-known legend of the ghost woman Mae Nak, which has already been adapted for theater, cinema and television, an unusual “technology” update: because in the as black and humorous fantasy comedy Critics' Week was awarded the Grand Prix in Cannes, the troubled souls drive into various industrial and household appliances. The most catchy is a passage in which the ghost woman still in love with her husband takes a vacuum cleaner.
After all, because of the violent smog, the residents of Bangkok regularly ask for the house not to leave the house, wear masks and use air filters. It is quite awesome that all sorts of anti-dust devices are now back. Unfortunately, the supermarket principle applies to Ratchaapoom Boonbunchoke: everyone from the audience should take out what appeals to him, which also applies to the artificial, partly tableau-like images. 130 minutes with a little tidy script are a certain challenge. Nevertheless, “A Usefull Ghost” is a wrong fun that should not be missed – including showdown between the refrigerator and vacuum cleaner, underlaid with a lively film music by Chai Bovon Seelookwar.
March's family is not enthusiastic that suddenly she should also add a ghost vacuum cleaner to her circle.
After the death of a factory worker, it haunted the factory of a family business. From then on, the soul of the dead lives in the devices – and always creates chaos. Meanwhile, March (Wisarut Himmarat), the factory owner's son, mourns his wife Nat (Davika Hoorne), who died of a respiratory disease. He will soon find out that she has returned to him in the form of a vacuum cleaner to protect him. March still sees his wife in the vacuum cleaner – and demands from his less enthusiastic family that she also recognizes that he wants to spend his life in the future with a self -rolling household device …
In her bright construction costume designed by Chatre Tengha with overridden shoulder pads in the 1980s look, Nat in human form looks like a businesswoman who has died out of time, but is now an “working spirit” with “unsettled shops”. The vacuum cleaner leans slightly and humbly forward, a shining LED circle shows that NAT lives and is not a dead thing. One of the most absurd scenes is probably the one in which March with a bright red vacuum cleaner in the bedside and his mother (Apasiri Nitibhon) comes into the door at that moment.
The production design is completely composed
When electric shocks finally come into play in order to extinguish the memories of the living of the dead (then the spirits also dissolve), parallels to compulsive conversions of homosexual people are obvious. The bloody red red protests from 2010, which the powerful people prefer not to be reminded, also play a central role. Also in the film: the “Academic Ladyboy” (Wisarut Homhuan), the real name of which is not revealed until the end. In the framework act, he has a vacuum cleaner at home that sucks, but coughs the dust again at night – and the repair employee that is surprisingly quickly at the door is obviously not the one for whom he spends.
Ratchaapoom Bonbunchoke describes his style as a “elegant perversion” and “perverse elegance”. Even with sex scenes that happen quite suddenly, he ensures real laugh. “A Useful Ghost” has absolutely style: The vacuum cleaners were designed by the award -winning industrial designer Hao Jie, all ghosts have colored hair in the film – the white electric shock room, actually a room for testing electronic devices in a university in Thailand, looks futuristic and surreal at the same time.
In its human form, the spirit of NAT (Davika Hoorne) is reminiscent of a eighties business command.
Each scene is completely composed by product designer Rasiguet Sokkarn: If March is in bed with a vacuum cleaner net, it is not only as red as the vacuum cleaner, of course NAT's hair is also “vacuum cleaner red”. The nurse with white hat is dressed in front of her canary yellow, while the industrialists do not stand out, but almost merge with their dusty surroundings. They are the preachers of pollution – and the revenge will be surprisingly bloody.
Conclusion: “A Useful Ghost” combines horror, romance, queerness, political anger and absurd humor with satirical undertone. The vacuum cleaner spirit film can only be described in two words: “Ratchaapoom Boonbunchoke”, whose name already sounds like a huge explosion!
We saw “A Useful Ghost” at the Hamburg Film Festival in 2025.