A Useful Ghost

Many of us have probably heard of the notion of “the ghost in the machine.” And now director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s debut feature brings entirely new meaning to that concept – literally ‒ in this impressive, offbeat comedy-drama-fantasy. The film tells the unusual story of March (Wisarut Himmarat), the widowed young son of Suman (Apasiri Nitibhon), the cold, stone-faced, inflexible owner of a vacuum cleaner factory and an embittered widow herself. One might think that their mutual circumstances give them something in common, but such is not the case. Suman never cared much for her late daughter-in-law, Nat (Davika Hoorne), and doesn’t exactly miss her now that she’s gone. But those feelings become exacerbated when Nat’s ghost reincarnates, coming back to life by inhabiting the machinery of one of her factory’s vacuum cleaners, a development that Suman finds wholly unnatural and unacceptable but that March welcomes when he’s reunited with his departed beloved. Nat’s reason for returning is to care for her husband, who appears to be suffering symptoms of the same respiratory illness that killed her, one attributable to excess exposure to dust, a growing problem affecting the public in general, including the workers at Suman’s plant. In fact, this burgeoning environmental and public health issue has already killed one employee and soon leads to the factory’s shutdown by government officials, a development for which Suman blames Nat’s reincarnated spirit by drawing attention to the condition. And, in turn, much to March’s chagrin, Suman and her family do everything they can to get rid of the pesky ghost so they can reopen the plant and restore their severely diminished income stream. But can Nat be eliminated that easily? What’s more, this incident turns out to be just the beginning of an all-out war on ghosts by a public frustrated by their return (both in mechanical and human form) and the nagging, unwanted consequences that, for various reasons, generally accom...