Sightlines · reception

How A Useful Ghost was received

2025 · Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke · A Useful Ghost on Sightlines

The arc

Came out of nowhere at Cannes 2025 — a debut feature that won the Critics' Week Grand Prize outright, with the jury calling it 'bold, free and unclassifiable,' and instantly became Thai cinema's biggest festival moment since the Apichatpong era. Months later it was Thailand's official Oscar entry for the 98th Academy Awards.

What’s debated

The recurring debate is whether the gloriously silly logline and the dense political allegory underneath actually fit in one movie — some fans find the tonal swerves the whole point, others think it's overstuffed.

Its footprint

The one-line pitch — a dead wife comes back as a bright-red vacuum cleaner — did the memeing for it; the vacuum itself became the film's instantly recognizable, endlessly screenshotted image on the festival circuit.

Where it stands

A fast canon climber: a festival-darling debut that put Thai cinema back in the Cannes conversation and became an early Letterboxd favorite among new Southeast Asian cinema.

Did you know? Davika Hoorne, who voices/plays the ghost wife, became a megastar playing the ghost wife in Pee Mak (2013) — Thailand's highest-grossing film ever and itself a riff on the same Mae Nak legend this film plays with, making her casting a knowing wink.