Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
叛逆的女儿在作文里讲她是如何讨厌自己母亲的软弱和恐惧 我也曾是那个自私晚熟的女儿 而现在 我也理解了成年人的软弱和恐惧 中年生活的困境和血淋淋的真相
从拒之门外到主动迎接，也许失去过的爱才会明白去珍惜。疫情大背景下中美文化差异被刻意的夸大了很多，但是最普世的情感还是想通的，没有宣传下的催人泪下，都是最简单的真情流露，林嘉欣和方郁婷的表演都值得点赞！
得分：7
动情足够，演技出彩带来的余味是有的，但围绕家庭情感、身份认同、爱与成长这些核心命题，在层次上仍欠缺一些厚重。这就导致在很多台词文本和表演节奏中设计感略突兀，印象深的像爸爸坐在楼梯上哭，妈妈受洗后不能烧纸钱妹妹的发问，还有妹妹那句you know mammy loves you, right。这就显示出为什么杨德昌的台词能成为经典，因为他不光有设计，还有盛放设计的想象空间，感觉阮凤仪似乎是想学，但没学来。
当我觉得开始变得有意思，有韵味的时候，就马上冷却。不明白摄像机要瞄准谁，该含蓄的时候也不内收。最打动人的绝不可能是结尾：妈妈好爱你。而是那句：“芳安要回来了，我煮什么好。”
背景和故事内容相似，却比瀑布流畅太多了。结尾仓促了些。
一个分崩离析的家庭，在笼罩着恐惧的瘟疫背景下，如何拨开云雾找回阳光？
虽然讲的家庭，其实更多的是触动了一部分人的怀旧吧，2003年当时台湾怎么有还不如我在武汉的感觉。
三星半。孩子在不同环境中矛盾与不适，人生患病并健康之间的心态。
“我不会有一个小孩。”可事实是我已经是两个人的小孩、在没有找到另一条可走的路之前、我接受这个事实。
第3452-影片可看，演员表现都不错。
妈妈，你可不可以不要死。（情绪过渡有些硬，一直在等的那个演讲也没来
其实是父母早逝，只身携带双女在美国的女强人，片子却聚焦她无奈病回台湾在家庭里的无助，大女儿只会反问“为啥妈妈这么软弱”。 青春的叛逆姐姐，懂事互补的妹妹，面对死亡阴影夫妻不同的态度，都无比真实且细腻。喜欢结尾，母亲跟父亲的两场哭戏之后，家庭也走向和解，留白空镜头。
很真实，所以很入心。亲密关系是最难的，因为大家都take it for granted，也觉得可以太过随意。
当妈妈真的好辛苦，除了开头，后面妈妈的劳累程度几乎让人忘记了她自己是个癌症患者……😭
同样语境之下的家庭反思，有细节有生活有矛盾，一泉活水。
情绪很重也很实，不知不觉就进入到这个家庭里了
关于成长阵痛、中美文化身份认同、中式家庭关系之中矛盾与爱的无解，剧作处理其实有些浅了。整部想讲的事情杨德昌在《青梅竹马》已给出了答案：美国也不是万灵丹，跟结婚一样，只是短暂的希望，让你以为一切可以重新开始的一种幻觉。
3.5接近四星 没有解决根本问题 有一些共通的场景情境有点触动吧 ，ps 中国妈妈的囊肿结节都是被孩子气出来的
越长大越绝望
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