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".
第一次做父亲不懂得爱女儿的父亲在失去之后在抽筋剥皮的痛楚中逐渐学会了如何去爱，可惜一切围绕着这事件的人都已支离破碎。结尾尚有一丝丝的光。为喜欢的古田加一星。
大晚上看这个真的太气了 这老爸脾性差还充满戾气 我不懂为什么他讨人厌了一整场却因为最后小小的柔软而得到大家的谅解。我不是说花音该死 说我黑心也罢 我认为这样的老爸就应该让他承受点人生的痛苦！凭什么还能趾高气扬地地追问人家要自己想要的被扭曲的真相？反倒是店长 战战兢兢地工作 如履薄冰地看着世人的眼光 别人只对他说句“谢谢”就让他流泪 这样的人为什么活得那么痛苦？还有第一个撞到花音的小姐姐 被良心和舆论打倒了 为什么到死了都没活得一句原谅？这样固执已见的老爸 到女儿死了才去试着理解她的老爸 凭什么带给人家那么多痛苦？真想他手在船上被割伤然后破伤风死掉！媒体也该死 社会需要公义 还有需要保护维持公义的方式！【我恨得咬牙切齿 皆因老爸这个演员演得真好】
激赏的还是题材，一个情绪化的父亲痛失“爱女”，迁怒于所有涉及到的人，连带出了更多人生的悲剧。电影敢于表达最情绪的事件，需要深度理解社会心理，演员的压力也很大吧，因为几乎可以感觉得到剧中人物的战栗。
佩内洛普我的女神～～～～～跳舞那段真的太可爱了。这种片子给我的观感体验更多的是一种“还能这样”的惊喜感，比如粉碎奖杯，各种明争暗斗，那段对演技的比拼，最后的反转，结尾的设置，都很有意思。
前方路漫漫，无数选择的当口，坚定内心勇往直前，人生没有彩排，走过的路都是你的勋功章。
比较一般，尬点很多。虽说被推下楼那个转折挺让人惊讶的，但是整体来看对于每个人物的塑造都停留在贴标签的程度，并没能完整立体的把人物行为思想动机表达出来。
很多有趣的东西但是镜头语言会不会过于简单了，失去了影像的力量挺可惜的
虽然的确有反思到日本谢罪文化的窒息和媒体报道的失效，但看完只想创死大爹不能不说是创作出现了严重偏差，而且配上这么和解的结尾反思了个寂寞啊。
蛮喜欢结尾那几段的...尤其合气道的伏笔和...看似草率其实非常戏剧性的应用...还有造桥剪彩..."一切都按照预期发展,从来没有什么草台班子理论"...另外,里面那句所有职业都是一种虚伪的自负感作祟也是蛮...新潮的..."跟片子的导演姐姐一样有个性"...
又一部manipulation片，榨取每个人身上的符号拼凑而成
看到三分之一依然没有笑点，导演试图讽刺所有人的努力到像是便秘一样显而易见，嗯，我们知道了戏内戏外、艺术现实都是sb，包括观众。冗长而慢吞吞的电影，故事都讲不好就不要谈什么讽刺或黑色幽默。看来以后西班牙的喜剧也要和法国喜剧并列慎重。这玩意儿在中国不适合上院线。
VIFF21 #8 [Playhouse] 既然片名叫主竞赛了，真是一部特别适合在电影节看的crowd pleaser，全场笑声都没停过。最搞笑的是头顶“巨石”、吻戏ASMR以及粉碎机。表演真是太棒了，从头到尾都是大写的Acting！ Banderas演Felix这个角色真是好meta哈哈“追名逐利的好莱坞演员”。另外Penélope Cruz Floss dance I need this GIF asap!
的确比不过导演之前的杰出公民和蛮荒故事 但是风格还在 看起来依然带劲 用最优雅的演员和最优雅的布景去做最傻逼最真实的事 说到底戏里戏外都在演
人与人 人与这个世界 都可以以用毁灭达成和解 人与自我该用何种方式达成和解 ps：日本影人的时空观念和声音观念延续的真特么的牛逼
无良媒体+暴躁且根本不了解女儿的父亲+网暴
如导演之前的《犬猿》一样激烈和戏剧冲突不断，结局倒是处理得有几分温柔。希望自己记住这部不太起眼的电影，记住这个固执倔强不肯认错，但其实内心无法原谅自己的父亲。
继晨间剧后，短时间内再一次看伊东苍小姑娘扮演心事重重的女子中生。吉田写群像依然有个个生存处境各各不乏亮点的细致处，整体叙事上始终有些不得要领。
3.5星 挺有趣的 幽默和讽刺的形式都挺有想法的 相比之下这个剧本就没那么多惊喜了
好看！介于文艺和商业之间，非常电影节的节奏，流畅精彩！
最近几部日本电影都在反思社交媒体放大的恶和人与人之间难以理解、信任带来的悲剧。这部电影前半段差点压抑到让我想弃掉，幸亏坚持到结尾，至少导演最后还是让一点点善意变成了救赎的可能，人们没有疯狂到底，仇恨被踩了刹车，虽然明知这也可能是虚构出来牵强的回转，但此时此地的我却为此会心一笑。一切都不是是毫无意义的空白吧。
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