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‘A Useful Ghost’ Review: A Haunted Vacuum Cleaner Hoovers Up Attention in Pleasingly Particular Ghost Story
'A Useful Ghost,' the debut of Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, follows a dead wife reincarnated as a vacuum cleaner. It won the Critics' Week prize at Cannes.
Rather than rebel against the family who treat her so poorly, Vacuum Nat attempts to placate them by proving herself “a useful ghost”: she will help them exorcise similarly displaced spirits from their factories, where unsafe working conditions have killed others who have later come back as appliances too. Or perhaps a haunted vacuum cleaner would be a sinister thing, imbued with menace in the style of the Plymouth Fury in John Carpenter’s “Christine” or the innumerable porcelain dolls in Blumhouse horror movies? Alas, being honest, the box office prospects for this one seem destined for an arthouse audience, though its offbeat charm is winning, as is its successful transition into melancholy mode, shot through with a distinctive sense of the macabre.
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