Shoppers and cinephiles are flocking to queer, politically charged cinema that uses ghosts and gadgets to ask who gets to be remembered. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s A Useful Ghost (2025) lands loud and funny, but it also nudges viewers into a dirtier conversation about usefulness, memory and power , and why that matters now.

Essential Takeaways

  • Bold premise: A Useful Ghost blends comedy and horror via a haunted hoover, making grief and politics oddly domestic and funny.
  • Queer angle: The central ghost, Nat, is queer-coded and becomes “useful” to the living, which complicates identity and solidarity.
  • Political stakes: The film ties personal hauntings to the 2010 Thai crackdown, so memory and erasure are political acts.
  • Tactile filmmaking: Expect a mix of physical detail , dust, coughing, whirring machines , and visual absurdity that still feels urgent.
  • Broader trend: The film sits within a wider Queer East curatorial push toward experimental, politically engaged Asian cinema.

Why a haunted hoover makes an unexpectedly fierce political point

The hook here is deliciously domestic: a hoover that coughs and carries a ghost. That absurd, tactile image , dust, the soft vibration of a motor, the occasional ache of a remembered body , lets the film speak in small, intimate ways. According to reviews, A Useful Ghost uses this comic mechanism to bring bigger questions into the living room, so the ordinary becomes uncanny and revealing. Expect moments that make you laugh and then feel slightly guilty about it.

Backstory matters. The ghost Nat returns by inhabiting a household appliance after dying from respiratory illness, and the narrative intercuts her story with that of a self-styled “academic ladyboy” whose city life is literally clouded by redevelopment dust. The film doesn’t let the joke float away; it anchors humour in social reality, so the domestic gag becomes a window into class, pollution and grief.

If you’re picking the film for a group night, note that it’s sly rather than gruesome. The hoover is playful and eerie, which keeps the mood watchable while the political context settles in.

Queerness as usefulness , and the cost of being handy

One of the film’s sharper ideas is that queerness can be co-opted. Nat becomes “useful” to those in power, helping tidy away inconvenient memories , literally cleaning the traces of political violence. That’s a chilling, clever twist: being helpful isn’t always benign.

This is where the film feels contemporary. Many writers have noted how modern movements can be assimilated or neutralised when they’re repackaged as compassionate, productive extras for the mainstream. The story suggests a queer life that’s not only trying to survive but is at risk of being turned into an instrument that silences others.

For viewers, the takeaway is practical: ask who benefits when marginalised people are applauded for being “helpful.” The ethics of representation are on the screen, not in an abstract lecture.

Memory, state violence and who gets to stay dead

A Useful Ghost ties personal haunting to the ghosts of collective trauma , specifically referencing victims of the 2010 Thai military crackdown. That linkage pushes the film beyond personal melodrama into civic reckoning. When Nat erases certain memories, the film asks: who decides which pasts are allowed to remain?

This is cinematic work with civic implications. Other festival programming, like selections in Queer East, shows a trend toward films that interrogate authority and historical narratives. If you enjoy films where personal stories illuminate political structures, this sits comfortably alongside more documentary-minded pieces that do similar work.

Watching the film, you’ll find the emotional register shifts often: comic, tender, angry. That variety keeps the political message from ever feeling didactic.

Style and tone: playful, bitter, haunted

Visually and tonally, the film reportedly plays with sharp contrasts , bright domestic interiors and the grubby grit of urban redevelopment. The hoover’s mechanised noises become almost a character’s voice, and the absurdity is balanced with a real sense of loss. That blend is why critics have called it both a fable and a comic conceit that bites.

If you like formally inventive cinema , films that merge genre with social critique , this is a pick for you. It’s not polished mainstream fantasy; it’s scrappy, sometimes uneven, and frequently precise where it needs to be.

How A Useful Ghost fits into the wider Queer East wave

Queer East’s curators have been selecting films that stretch form and interrogate power, and this film fits that brief snugly. Across festival programmes, a common image kept returning to writers: people dancing behind bars. That visual is more than a motif; it’s a way to read films that ask how queer freedom is limited, fought for, and remembered.

For viewers and programmers, this means there’s appetite for films that refuse tidy categorisation. If you’re assembling a mini-season or looking for double bills, pair A Useful Ghost with documentary or experimental titles that centre memory, labour and political trauma for a richer conversation.

Closing line It’s a small, strange film that leaves you watching your appliances a little more closely , and wondering who’s allowed to stay in the room.

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