Fantôme Utile (2025)

Amazing movie!

Just out of the preview in Paris, France. Pretty excited to be the one to post the first review ! The whole experience was amazing.
The storyline starts quite lightly, and becomes deeper and deeper, but still with super funny moments! I don't want to spoil anything so I won't say more, but it is very well written and I didn't see most of the plot twists coming.

The aesthetics/photography is wonderful as well, and the costumes really great, especially for the character of Nat.

All the actors did great, but I especially noticed the amazing performance by Apasiri Nitibhon, she can convey so complexe emotions without saying a word nor moving a single muscle, it was a true priviledge to watch her at this level of excellence.

All and all a movie all cinephiles must watch! If you're Davika's or Most's fan they have enough screentime for you to enjoy.

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“We refuse to leave, because we don't give up. Even if some try to erase us.”

I'm so happy to finally be able to see this movie after waiting for it since it was announced!! It's the second film submitted by Thailand to be nominated at Oscar's Best International film that I've seen, and I'm baffled that they didn't make it all the way (the first one being "How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies"). Thailand, to me, is a cinematic goldmine that is yet to be discovered by the world. Having a director whose debut film is THIS can only be a sign of a national cinema that is expanding exponentially.

With images, music, acting, and production that strongly recall Yorgos Lanthimos's incredible Poor Things (2023), A Useful Ghost is a plea, a social protest that manifests in a strange world where ghosts are part of everyday life and the Thai spoken by its protagonists sounds monotonous. It depicts a world in crisis, but one that explodes in shapes and colors.

Davikah's character, whose performance shines as expected, is the "living" image of a group of people who have not been brought to justice, but are rejected, marginalized, and discriminated against. We are shown a story where ghosts have no rights and are seen as objects that move, speak, and, as a form of protest, torment the living.

I must say that what I expected from this film was an explicit critique of one of the most direct consequences of capitalism: environmental pollution. It shows how ever-increasing industrial production and urbanization continue to rapidly gain ground, crushing culture, art, and human lives, especially the most vulnerable ones. And in a way, it is that, but this film also turned out to be a call to memory; this fiction, where ghosts appear and linger as long as someone remembers them, speaks directly to the viewer (through the eyes of the nameless ladyboy protagonist) to reveal the horrors of oblivion. Memory, a historical debt owed by the government to their people, is a right for families who lose their loved ones at the hands of negligence.

A Useful Ghost, as its name suggests, unveils the underlying objectification and exploitation of communities at the base of a still-present social pyramid (workers, women, queer people, people of color), who fall into oblivion until they become useful to those at the top. It represents, in its rawest essence, the contradiction experienced by those below the powerful, in order to exercise their right to exist.

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