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".
「在这个世界上，我最不想要成为的人是我的母亲，因为她的恐惧，会成为我的恐惧，而她的软弱，会使我软弱。」
竟然是处女作，导演太成熟，敏感又脆弱尖锐又无力。挑不出什么毛病的片子，非常喜欢一些细节满满又情节缺失的处理。想拨乱反正，这才应该是最佳影片，林嘉欣也不知道比贾静雯强了几条街。
近几年来，台湾电影颇有中兴之势，其深层原因，很可能与18年金马事件有关。大陆的终止合作，使得不少台湾电影人才回归本岛。有人才有戏，这是无可辩驳的道理。
03非典那年我九岁，小学三年级，学校突然通知不用上课，我高兴到站在课桌上面蹦，被老师呵斥。电影真细腻，林嘉欣真好，03年真好。
天下所有妈妈都值得respect！青春期的小女孩真是妈妈的“扎心”的小棉袄呢。
现在你该知道了吧，这个世界就像怎么也戴不上的马嚼子大部分时候并不以你的意志为转移，无论你需要或者不需要什么。
移民二代被迫回乡遭遇的认同危机、母亲罹癌引发的家庭危机、背负全家经济重担却面对妻病女闹的父亲面对的中年危机、中二少女成长过程中与母亲日趋紧张的情感危机，这个家几乎每个人都有那种在“兵荒马乱”的日常生活中接近崩溃的压力与紧张，燃鹅每个人在困境下无法言说的负累又很让人心疼。只是在剪不断理还乱的困顿中，缺乏杨德昌那种深刻而犀利的社会切片分析，从美国到中国那种文化冲突的刻画又缺乏李安那种细腻温良的描摹，所以到最后只能用一种温吞而欠缺说服力的方式完成暂时的和解，格局上落于下乘，但是一些充满了时代性的元素也会让人共鸣，无论是情怀还是对林嘉欣本人的喜爱，都可以私心加上半星。
整天想着死，去死啊！你这样跟妈妈说话的吗？
3.22 三星半。
上中学最叛逆的那段时间，恨过讨厌过我妈。今年30了，我很感谢我妈，很爱她，终于懂世上只有妈妈好。也许有时候会被当作妈宝，那是因为她太强了，我崇拜她，我觉得她说的很多事都是对的。希望妈妈会活很久很久，一直一直健康平安，一直一直很幸福。有一句话我想这辈子都不可能当面说出口，I LOVE YOU，Mom。
对东方情感的粗暴理解让人看得十分压抑，为了矛盾而矛盾，为了和解儿和解，对于人在困顿中的自我挣扎和寻求自洽的本能没有深入的体察和温情的观照。感到全程笼罩在创作者青春期式的任性抱怨中难得解脱。
里面描写的20年前台湾学校教育和家庭教育的氛围，像极了现在中国大陆的样子，老师体罚学生，家长打骂小孩，成绩差的学生受排挤，言语霸凌的严重性被忽视。
天下所有妈妈都值得respect！青春期的小女孩真是妈妈的“扎心”的小棉袄呢。
2021/12/06新光影城台北市婦女館特映。台詞很真實，跟《瀑布》比起來較貼近生活。
3.5 非典那段有几幕戏蛮有力量。对于林嘉欣，我的印象还停留在《男人四十》，岁月催人老啊……
剧本很扎实，并非矛盾转和谐的两段式结构，而是有着层层起伏，像海上的浪一样，而吹动这些风浪的是内外压力的挤压，美国梦的破碎、教育的转向、死亡的威胁、瘟疫的袭扰，每个人都自身难保，糟糕的情绪互相传递，气氛相当压抑。
非典时期，台湾也是深受影响的。也是对当下疫情的一种观照。
结尾处有加分。
家有两女，如有两宝。女主演的真好，依旧喜欢林嘉欣。
7/10.
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