Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke delivers an ambitious feature debut with 'A Useful Ghost,' a supernatural black comedy that confronts Thailand's historical trauma.
The 39-year-old Thai filmmaker won the Critics' Week grand prize at Cannes for this film.
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The narrative weaves national grief alongside personal loss into a surreal fantasy.
It tackles lingering ghosts from military crackdowns in 2010, coups in 2006 and 2014, and the 1976 Thammasat University demonstrations.
The story unfolds in a Thailand actively trying to erase its past, such as removing friezes from Bangkok's Democracy Monument.
Metaphorical toxic dust clouds fill the air during these removals, triggering uncanny events.
A queer academic named Wisarut Homhuan studies the iconography of the removed frieze.
He buys a new vacuum cleaner, which unexpectedly begins coughing up the toxic dust it just ingested.
A repairman named Wanlop Rungkumjad arrives with eerie speed after a customer service call. He reveals that the appliance factory is haunted, introducing a eerie flashback sequence.
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Ghosts as State Tools
A factory worker named Krittin Thongmai haunts the building as a poltergeist after dying from inhaling hazardous dust on the shop floor.
The tragic karma spreads further to the factory owner's family.
The owner's young daughter-in-law, played by Davika Hoorne, dies during childbirth from dust inhalation.
Her spirit inhabits a vacuum cleaner, attempting intimate contact with her grieving husband, Wisarut Himmarat.
The widow Suman, portrayed by Apasiri Nitibhon, along with government minister Gandhi Wasuvitchayagit, manipulate the spirit.
They coerce the ghost into infiltrating worker dreams to erase memories of inconvenient historic events.
The regime exploits the spirit's desire for motherhood, offering her frozen eggs to turn her against other restless ghosts.
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Boonbunchachoke constructs a disturbing satire about state repression, memory, and grief.
