Cineverse is rolling out “A Useful Ghost” for its U.S. run, and The Playlist is exclusively debuting a new clip from Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prix winner ahead of the film’s January 16, 2026, limited theatrical release.
The supernatural black comedy-drama premiered in the Critics’ Week section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival last year, where it won the Grand Prix, immediately announcing itself as one of those debuts that used the supernatural less as genre garnish than as a sideways way into something painfully current.
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The fantastical film begins with grief and a kind of environmental cruelty: Worried about her husband being allergic to dust, Nat, a recently deceased woman, returns as a ghost possessing a vacuum cleaner to clean the house and protect her family from other vengeful ghosts. To become a useful ghost, she needs to get rid of the useless ones.
Boonbunchachoke arrived at his first feature with an already-baked sensibility for sly, politicized surrealism: his short “Red Aninsri; Or, Tiptoeing on the Still Trembling Berlin Wall” won Locarno’s Junior Jury Award in 2020, a calling card that helped frame “A Useful Ghost” as a filmmaker’s next step rather than a lucky swing.
As Ankit Jhunjhunwala wrote in his Cannes review for The Playlist, “The matter-of-fact way the characters treat ghosts and haunted household appliances lends an arch, ironic tone to the film.”
The film stars Davika Hoorne opposite Witsarut Himmarat, with Apasiri Nitibhon, Wanlop Rungkumjud, and Wisarut Homhuan rounding out the key ensemble. “A Useful Ghost” opens in select U.S. theaters on January 16, 2026. Watch an exclusive clip below and check out the trailer again if you haven’t seen it.
