‘A Useful Ghost’ Review: When a Vacuum Cleaner Becomes a Ghostly Lover

Strange no matter how you look at it—by turns amusing, melancholic, and at times downright baffling—A Useful Ghost plays like a philosophical comedy that occasionally feels like a distant cousin of a Quentin Dupieux film, only to pivot, without warning, into a serious and emotionally dense Asian drama, specifically Thai. Its premise is so overtly satirical that it comes as a surprise when, not long after, the film begins to morph into a heavy, even political drama, before circling back to absurdity. Naturally, ghosts are involved.

The framing device alone suggests oddity. A man buys a vacuum cleaner for his home, only to discover that at night the machine mysteriously empties the dust it has collected back onto the floor. Concerned, he calls customer service. A repairman arrives and calmly explains that there must be a ghost inside the appliance—apparently, they’ve been roaming the area. As this is presented as a familiar part of Thai culture (anyone who has seen films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul will know that ghosts there are treated with a certain everyday normality), no one seems particularly shocked. Things shift, however, when the repairman begins telling the story behind those ghosts.

A Useful Ghost returns intermittently to this storyteller and his listener—who soon begin a sexual relationship—but the heart of the film lies in the tale he recounts. It begins when March, the widowed son of a factory owner, starts communicating with the ghost of Nat, his deceased wife, who appears to him in the form of a vacuum cleaner. He sees her with the body of his former partner; everyone else, however, only sees and hears a talking vacuum cleaner that speaks, moves around, and settles into her husband’s daily life. March’s family wants nothing to do with the ghost and does everything possible to drive her away, separate the couple, and make him forget her—because forgetting, they believe, would cause her to vanish. They even subject March to endless electroshock sessions, all without success.

The situation is inherently paradoxical. The mobile, talkative vacuum cleaner—capable, among other things, of bringing her husband to orgasm—pushes the film into a comic register that it often seems happy to embrace. At the same time, the film’s serious, subdued, and melancholic tone—along with that hushed manner of speaking typical of many Asian dramas—makes it clear that director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke is aiming for something beyond the initial absurd conceit. Soon, the story grows more complex, especially when March’s mother realizes that Nat’s ghost might be put to use in reviving the family’s failing factory.

This is merely the starting point for a narrative that spirals into unexpected territory, involving other relationships between humans and ghosts, and other forms those ghosts take—from refrigerators to air conditioners, all the way to sleek robot vacuum cleaners. Beneath the apparent silliness of the premise, A Useful Ghost gradually adopts a heavy, mournful tone: ghosts longing for their bonds with the living (and vice versa), connections that fade away, sex, loss, and, in a surprising turn, something resembling class struggle. One that pits electronic devices against humans—but a class struggle nonetheless.

The Thai director’s debut feature operates in a space of illusions, lost and rediscovered dreams, immersing itself in the inner worlds of its characters as it tries to make sense of their desires, grief, and regrets. That effortless dialogue between humans and ghosts—whether or not those ghosts take the form of talking household appliances—is what makes this extravagant and curious film so compelling. It might have benefited from being a bit shorter, and from avoiding a few extra narrative twists piled on toward the end. Still, these are forgivable missteps for an ambitious first feature. At its best, A Useful Ghost moves lyrically through a realm where the metaphysical, the religious, and even Artificial Intelligence intersect. Don’t be surprised if one day ChatGPT starts speaking to you in the voice of a deceased relative, telling you it misses you. You’ve been warned.