• A Useful Ghost (ผีใช้ได้ค่ะ )

7/28/26 (Tues)

I put Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s 2025 film on my must-see list when I learned it was about a woman who dies and comes back as a vacuum cleaner. I had thought that the last word in reincarnation was My Mother the Car, a short-lived TV series in the 1960s about a woman who returns as her son’s automobile. (It’s now ranked one of the worst TV shows ever made, but I remember enjoying it as a kid – maybe I have a thing for haunted appliances.) In the Thai tale, however, what starts as a deadpan comedy turns into something deeper, if a bit convoluted.

The rapid construction work in Thailand, considered a sign of progress as the old is replaced by the new, throws off voluminous volumes of dust that is causing respiratory problems among the population. A young gay guy calling himself Academic Ladyboy is surprised when his new vacuum cleaner coughs (in a human voice) and spits out the dust it has inhaled. When he calls a repairman, a hunky guy shows up almost immediately and, upon examining the device, finds that it is possessed. He then tells the startled Ladyboy a story about other rogue machines, setting the film in motion. Much later, someone claiming to be the actual repairman shows up, throwing the story in a new light – but that’s getting ahead of things.

The hunk tells about an appliance factory where a worker who died from a respiratory ailment has come back as a constantly belching ghost, accusing the company of killing him with the dust. Refusing to go quietly, he takes control of the factory’s equipment and appliances and causes havoc with operations, leading authorities to shut the business down. Meanwhile, the factory owner’s 20-something son, examining the damage, is surprised when a vacuum cleaner rolls up and reveals herself as his late wife. She speaks to him softly, unbuttons his shirt, and caresses his nipples with her brush, which opens up a whole new line of demand for vacuums – that alone should justify the film’s title. The factory owner is understandably miffed when she discovers her son having an orgasm with an appliance.

Whereas he sees his dead wife, others perceive her other only as a vacuum. Unable to wean him off his fantasy, the mother consults a doctor, who theorizes at first that the man’s attraction to the device is due to his gay brother’s marriage to a man. Eventually he points out that ghosts will only vanish once they are forgotten, at which the mom directs him to conduct electric shock treatments on her fevered son to drive the memory out (“I’m less worried about his fever than that he’s screwing a vacuum cleaner”).

At the same time, the vacuum proves helpful in two ways. First, it whisks the dust from the eyes of a suffering patient who turns out to be an important government minister. He is grateful for the aid, and when the mother dismantles the device in an attempt to get rid of it, he orders that it be repaired, thereby saving its life (if that’s what you call it). Separately, the mother hunts down the person whose memory is keeping the pesky factory ghost alive and enlists the vacuum to suck out the memory. That rids her of the ghost for good, allowing her to reopen the factory. The mother takes a new attitude once she realizes the vacuum’s usefulness. (As an aside, it is revealed that she had abandoned shock therapy for her gay son when he started generating profits for the firm. People can be useful, too.)

Unfortunately the minister takes note. The ghost, having for some reason taken visible human form, is summoned by the minister alongside her widower to a meeting of high-ranking officials. He wants her to wipe out the memories of those grieving the loss of rebels murdered by the government in a real-life 2010 massacre, thereby purging the ghosts. In exchange, he will allow the release of eggs that the woman had frozen prior to her death, which as a ghost she can no longer access. The husband is aghast, protesting that this is going too far, but the woman’s desire to create children prompts her to agree. As she proceeds to erase the memories of the people and thus the massacre itself, the husband laments that he no longer recognizes her and explicitly begins reading a book about the massacre to ensure it is not forgotten. While they do end up with a child, she eventually fades away.

After hearing the tale, Ladyboy is upset that the woman was willing to compromise her morals for the regime. That pleases the hunk, who reveals that he was the ghost in the kid’s vacuum. He was murdered by the regime in the 2010 killings, his feet encased in concrete and thrown into a lake. He rewards Ladyboy with a round of wild sex before disappearing into thin air (leaving the perplexed kid with his legs hanging emptily in the air). Ladyboy, moved by the story, dives into the lake and finds the concrete with the hunk’s feet. He delivers that to the minister, an act of remembrance that revives the hunk and many other victims of the massacre. The film takes a sharp shift to horror as the ghosts take their revenge in a stomach-churning finale.

What distinguishes this irreverent film is its deadpan approach, like a Thai version of Buster Keaton or Aki Kaurismäki (Drifting Clouds). The characters generally keep all emotions intact even when ghosts are wailing and taking over machines, making the situation even nuttier. When the vacuum goes into the hospital at night to see her sick husband, the bored receptionist tells her matter-of-factly that she no longer has spousal privileges, being dead and all (and an appliance to boot), and must wait until visiting hours in the morning. The sight of the vacuum curled up on a chair waiting all night, though absurd, was somehow moving. Similarly, the factory owner showed no open feeling at the rogue ghost taking over her machinery, as if this were an everyday event. Few emotions at all were on display until the whiplash switch to horror at the end.

The film can be confusing at first glance – why does the dead woman, for example, suddenly become visible to others? – and with the varying stories and characters, I didn’t really appreciate it until learning about the political background afterwards. Consequently, it dragged at over two hours. I think it would have been a different experience for Thais or others knowing more about the politics, especially given that the regime has hardly changed since the horrific killings; I’ll have to watch again to see what I may have missed. Monks make some rather ungodly remarks when trying to cure the haunted widower, which may or may not be a commentary on religion, and the social criticism of the position of gays in Thai society has been much noted, including by the director himself. Pollution is obviously an issue as well. But the political theme pretty much sweeps everything else aside in the end. I wasn’t wild about the bloodbath finale, which seemed essentially an effort at a conventional Hollywood-like ending as in Get Out.

Nevertheless, while a bit too sprawling for its own good, the movie makes its case through a fresh approach. Davika Hoorne and Witsarut Himmarat are fine as the ghost and young widower, but most memorable is Apasiri Nitibhon as the imperious mother and factory owner, who first tries to eradicate the ghost and then welcomes her when she proves handy. The staging was inventive, such as the people peeping in the hospital room at the edge of the screen, the scenes in a futuristic stark-white shock therapy room, and the fight between the vacuum and a haunted refrigerator (it’s complicated). The special effects, though not particularly high tech, were effective and endearing, at least until the overdone revenge sequence, while the dialogue, judging from the subtitles, was as nicely dry as the facial expressions. While the film would have benefited from a tighter presentation, it is unique and thought-provoking. Something different, for sure.