A Useful Ghost: Review by Kaiyrkul Abdyrakhmanova

Red. Blue. Orange.

Ghosts remain, sometimes by their own will, sometimes pulled by the living.

By Kaiyrkul Abdyrakhmanova

With feature debut A Useful Ghost, Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke blends social satire, absurdist comedy, family drama, and mysticism. These genres intertwine like layers of memory, where humor slips into sorrow and horror unfolds as an expression of love. The story follows March (Wisarut Himmarat), struggling with the loss of his wife Nat (Davika Hoorne), whose spirit inhabits a vacuum cleaner, creating tension within the family as Nat must prove her usefulness.

On the boundary between reality and fantasy, everyday spaces become arenas for reflection on loss and attachment—on what is worth preserving and what must sometimes be released to avoid becoming a prisoner of the past. Everything carries meaning here: air, sound, technology, and even dust become symbols. Pollution appears as a metaphor for the poisoning of consciousness and spiritual decay, while the ghost seems to hold the family together. The film’s symbolism is dense and occasionally heavy, but that is its strength: an attempt to convey the overloaded texture of contemporary consciousness.

The film’s color design subtly encodes meaning, reflecting class, alienation, and intimacy. Through shifts in hue and tone, Boonbunchachoke emphasizes transitions between material and spiritual realms, allowing color to convey psychological depth and subtle social cues without explicit exposition.

The film’s richly layered plot can be overwhelming at times, yet events unfold with smooth, coherent transitions, each scene feeling like a new chapter in March and Nat’s story. After March first notices Nat’s spirit inhabiting the vacuum cleaner, the story reaches a natural pause. It soon becomes clear that Nat can see other restless spirits and is asked to confront them, marking a subtle narrative shift. Sharp sounds punctuate the transitions, while music shifts smoothly from fairy-tale harp melodies to playful, dynamic notes, enhancing the atmosphere and emphasizing emotional nuances.

Special attention is given in the film to the question of usefulness. Ghosts inhabit household appliances—vacuum cleaners, refrigerators—or perform helpful functions, alleviating the pain of loss and assisting in problem-solving. Even after death, a person is not freed from the obligation to be needed: the ghost continues to serve, and among them, the rule “there is no irreplaceable worker” is maintained. This is a metaphor for productivity as a new form of prison, where care and attachment acquire a repeated, continuous rhythm.

Technology also prompts reflection on the body—its disappearance and replacement by the machine. The body dissolves, but its functions continue, transforming technology into an extension of the human. Boonbunchachoke carefully blurs the line between the living and the artificial, prompting reflection on where the human ends and its reflection begins—in metal, dust, and memory.

In its excess, the film is honest. Boonbunchachoke creates a sense of oversaturation—visual, auditory, and semantic—to convey the chaotic contemporary consciousness. A Useful Ghost does not strive to be clear or convenient: memory, attachment, traditions and service are intertwined beyond distinction. In this chaos, overload becomes a metaphor for life itself—contradictory, exhausting, but genuinely alive.

Director:  Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
Editor: Chonlasit Upanigkit
Cast:  Davika Hoorne, Wisarut Himmarat, ApasirI Nitibhon, Wanlop Rungkumjad, Wisarut Homhuan
Running Time: 130 min.
Country: Thailand
Year: 2025

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