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".
为什么豆瓣有八分？？在2022年第一天花时间和钱看人吵架？？我不李姐啊
润物细无声却各自汹涌般的精彩，仿佛又一部「爸妈不在家」。
好喜欢这类家庭题材，林嘉欣演技很好，剧情选择的内容很棒，即能表现各人物当时所处角度的想法，又能体现在家庭粘聚力下各种关系的感觉…
yah its about whether or not you think you have a choice and how you understand every bits of frustration in life。美国是完美的远方，通往成功的下一站，而眼前的生活只是羁绊。和短片《姐姐》一样，深刻的隐喻贯穿。没有隐喻我们就不会讲故事了。结尾动人。
影片很淡，生活里琐碎的事、家人间相处的难。好像我们都是这样长大的，即便是一家人，每个人都各自在生活里拥有课题，回到家里碰撞在一起。芳仪说「我只是觉得妈妈可以做得更好一些。」思婷反问道「万一这已经是她的“最好”了呢？」很多细节是很生活化的，在不同的年代和语境下都会碰触得到。不煽情、不夸张、不窥探，有留白、有温柔、也有感动。
以母女关系从冲突到修复作为主线，去讲女儿的心态变化，也有一些移民心态的体现，生活细节的描绘上确实非常到位，非典疫情的部分贡献了几个有力的单场戏，演员发挥也非常好，但是感觉导演在情感处理上用力不均，而且女儿的成长线做的还不够到位，演讲比赛的部分个人感觉应该展开。（7.5/10）
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。
蛮不错的。有人说不明白为什么几个主要角色都处于不理智用力过猛的状态。也许这就是一个极度焦灼家庭的常态吧。当你走得很近的时候，这种焦灼会放大。
林嘉欣还演的挺好的……出乎意料啊！有种看到自己变老的辛酸
「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。」
「來來來，來台大；去去去，去美國。」在對美好生活的嚮往、世代流行的洪流裡，站在這，你覺得那邊一定比較好，可是你不能去，你不去，才能解決這裡的問題。（摘自大象席地而坐）
真的太一般了 我一个会轻易被母女煽情打动的人都一脸懵逼 在Chicago-NYC飞机上看的
-可是如果这已经是她的最好了呢？
关于疫情的作品，台湾连续两个，还是不同时期，不同程度的，有一种呼应，更是一种对比。片中呈现出鲜明的大陆台湾文化同宗性，然而这一种相似性令人喉咙堵塞，心惊胆颤。中式教育的权威性、压抑性弊端明显，它让小孩害怕、畏惧、胆怯，不能表达自己内心，不快乐，大人说什么是什么，父母说什么是什么，老师说什么是什么，便于塑造与管理的同时，也失去了创造与豁达。这一家人，就是这种文化的缩影。听这家人说话的方式太难受了，通篇压抑，也来源于自己儿时的感受记忆，不想接触，一分一秒，都排斥。主人公的境遇，最初想起的是《小花的味增汤》，但观感，实在是两个极端。
华人家庭的内核感觉放在任何社会背景讲的都是一样的故事，所以如果剔除疫情、患病、海外归国这些背景的话，剩下的一切，不知道是不是可以用李安在《喜宴》里唯一的一句台词来总结
喜歡這種真正反映台北中等家庭生活的內容，喜歡裡面所有的演員，喜歡她說故事和拍攝的方式。希望還能有更多這樣探索親情和觸摸台灣底氣的作品。
三星半。其他都无感，唯爱那股子精准的少年叛逆感
知道它欠缺在哪里可是……丝丝入扣，针针入肉。林嘉欣太好了。
并没有什么特别的地方，不知道为什么室内镜头都那么暗
叛逆期的孩子，环境改变后无法融入新的地方。与母亲的别扭和冲突只有等着长大才发现自己的任性不懂事。
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