In Ratchapoom Boonprakob’s comedy, not even death is cause for a day off.
Mae Nak Phra Khanong is Thailand’s most famous Thai ghost story. It tells the story of a woman who dies during childbirth and who returns as a ghost, refusing to part with her husband. It’s an extraordinarily popular story, and one that’s seen countless film adaptations over the years. For the most part, however these films have been pretty straightforward retellings, occasionally done for laughs, but I don’t think I’ve seen on that’s been used as the basis for a satirical black comedy.
Told through the framing narrative of a ladyboy whose vacuum cleaner seems possessed by a spirit, who is told the story by the company’s repairman, the actual plot revolves around the company who produces those vacuums, and their atrocious worker’s right violations.
When a worker named Tok dies from the factory’s pollution, he becomes a vengeful ghost, haunting various appliances throughout. This is enough of a hazard to shut the factory down, which leaves owner Suman (Apasiri Nitibohn) in a mire. Meanwhile, Nat (Davika Hoorne) is a devoted housewife who has recently passed away. She possesses a vacuum cleaner in order to get closer to her husband, Suman’s son March (Witsarut Himmarat). This catches the attention of Suman who wants to use Nat’s ability to enter dreams to force people to forget Tok so he stops haunting the factory.
And wow is there a lot to go through. The story is really just about how Suman, unsatisfied with just exploiting her living employees, finds some from beyond the grave, but it takes a good minute to get there. The movie is deliberately obtuse with character details, painting its message with a layer of surrealism and quirk to help the satire go down easy.
Boonprakob’s comedy is, in fact, quite a hard bit of satire on capitalism, with a CEO using everything under her power to sell more and exploit her workers. If there’s profit to be made, not even the dead can rest easy. Suman is a great character, a boss so dedicated to her company’s health that the revelation that the afterlife is real isn’t enough to get her to reconsider. Instead, she doubles down. There’s no subtlety here, but that was never the intention. It’s every Thai – and possibly global – anxiety about the way the world is headed made semi-corporeal.
Boonprakob takes the concept of unfinished business to an extreme, far more literal level. There is always a job to do, even in death, and Nat experiences this first-hand. It’s no accident that the item she haunts is a vacuum cleaner, after all. She’s working class, a woman in the working class at that. A woman’s work is never done. The work will suck the soul from her body, extract value from every possible source. In the end, we are all dust.
A Useful Ghost (2025)
Also known as: ผีใช้ได้ค่ะ
Thai
Director: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
Writer: Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
CAST
Davika Hoorne – Nat
Witsarut Himmarat – March
Apasiri Nitibhon – Suman
Wanlop Rungkumjad – Krong
Wisarut Homhuan – Academic Ladyboy
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