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".
#sxsw2022premiere 实在太怀念这样跟全员cast+crew一起看一场电影，狂欢、庆祝。看Daniels的电影，那些很想哭的瞬间都是那种大醉大笑之后突然想留下的眼泪。最想说的是，作为影迷+影者，真的感谢the Daniels写了这样一个女主角，还给了杨紫琼。放眼望去也只有杨紫琼可以，遇到这样一个角色，为她觉得，好值，好玩！！
华裔的毁天灭地来得太文明了，选战场也仅限于IRS的office。
在我期望极高的情况下依然超出预期。绝对是越往后看越好看的电影，前半段简直就是吃了兴奋剂的沃卓斯基全家桶，而在快速剪辑把现实生活撕得粉碎之后，当观众已经被奇想、巧思、梗们晃晕之时，却又可以把碎片们重新拾起来呈现出来。“在普通人生活中寻找奥义”这一套已经不新鲜了，但花了大半部电影剪碎重拼的日常生活万花筒把这个俗气的道理展现得美妙绝伦。我总是认可那些试图给出答案而不只是提出问题的野心，它提出的问题那么大给出的答案又那么小，但论证过程太美妙了到结尾我已经觉得我可以接受任何答案。以及我绝对没想到传统的一代唐人街故事可以和平行宇宙科幻融合得那么完美，我将此归功于导演编剧的巧思。看完就回想，一个关于选择的故事，主角当然应该是一代移民；需要时空警察角色，但又不能与琐碎的日常生活割裂，还有什么比国税局更合适…
在电影院里爆哭，看完出来别人帮我扶门我都哭到说不出谢谢。和《Turning Red》其实是一个主题，但是表达得更爆炸更撕裂。这部电影带着我经历了“加速吧毁灭吧”的痛快的空虚，然后用简单直接包容的爱填满了这个虚空。所有对现状感到绝望的人，尤其是中国人都应该看这部电影，把自己掩藏在在习惯性麻木里的对现状感到的痛苦和对获得善意和爱的愿望一次过发泄出来，非常治愈。只要一想到父亲这个角色就会爆哭，加速人看不得这种无条件表达和追求善意的人。
胡乱吹捧的电影，又长又臭，乱七八糟，前面不断的宇宙跳跃，各种闪回，特别是税务审查那段，闪来闪去让我头晕脑胀差点吐了，这真的是我看电影以来第一部感觉到生理不适的影片，佩服。还有影评中吹捧的创意，一看就是未经打磨，想到就写，所以处处显得简陋牵强又不够精致缺乏逻辑叠加，就像小孩子天马行空，胡思乱想一通的玩意，你管这种东西叫创意？
脑洞片，内核框架跟turning red很像：强势老妈+无能老爸+叛逆女儿，介于难看和诡异之间，全程内心“淦、真几把怪，再看一眼”
多元宇宙中心呼唤爱只会轻飘飘地把前片搭建起的现实意义摧毁殆尽。生活逼疯母亲，母亲逼疯女儿，父辈没资格在疯女人发完疯之后出来收拾烂摊子占尽便宜。
如果停止于石头宇宙可能就非常完美了，不管是情绪还是意图上都有那么一丢丢的哲思味，后面无休无止的爱与善良着实看得人上火，前面无论是创意还是痛感都落实的足够到位，其实脑洞还好，令人赞叹的还是拍摄，剪辑等各部门的完美配合，当然说到底这样的电影还是很难看到的，惊喜。
亚洲家庭与代际隔阂所造成的痛苦够华裔导演拍几十年了
观感像是在算法控制下连刷抖音短视频。无法预知的视觉信息如万花筒般持续吸引看到第二部分，差不多到杨紫琼说“你值得被爱，总有些东西值得你所爱”，就知道它玩到头了，还是要回到东方亲情羁绊和迪士尼家庭和解的陈词滥调中，手法再恶趣味再酷也要落地安全区。母亲从虚无主义中学会包容爱恨情仇，形成这顿悟的方程式是偷懒的，是靠直给的概念设定、语录金句，和在多元宇宙穿梭转瞬即逝的快剪断裂结构，因此它缺乏绵延的影像情感力量，在锋芒毕露中受限其短。
这部电影给我的感觉就是，woc，电影还能这么拍！！！
脑洞创意绝了，中间部分很有那种人生模拟器的感觉，通过不同的选择拥有不同的人生，不停的进行宇宙跳跃过上不同的人生。那个进行宇宙跳跃前要做很奇怪的动作，真的好好笑，那个屁股塞什么的，玩得真大。料理浣熊王的梗也超好笑。
三星半。很简单的核心思想，填充过载的梗。看得我好累，头疼。
没有一种生活不值得过。
但这是个太敷衍的方式，特别是当世界的无数种可能在女儿面前无差别的展开时，爱的这点救赎力量就更值得怀疑。
#sxsw2022premiere 实在太怀念这样跟全员cast+crew一起看一场电影，狂欢、庆祝。看Daniels的电影，那些很想哭的瞬间都是那种大醉大笑之后突然想留下的眼泪。最想说的是，作为影迷+影者，真的感谢the Daniels写了这样一个女主角，还给了杨紫琼。放眼望去也只有杨紫琼可以，遇到这样一个角色，为她觉得，好值，好玩！！
希望在石头宇宙，一起坠落吧。
你问我为啥要对B级片这么苛刻……要真只有这点野心，那不要求多，至少要把片长控制在120分钟内吧？
Everything : 我知道一切都是虚幻，所谓物质不过是原子的无序组合。
我的天，被这部电影的内核、创意和表现手法震惊了🤯在电影院爆笑爆哭停不下来。这部电影完美融合了周星驰式的无厘头、中国原生家庭的痛、以及皮克斯式的心理疗愈。谁说电影在衰退，在一众寡淡无味的超级英雄和续集翻拍中，这部华裔导演的作品将电影艺术又推上一个新高度。
Copyright © 2015-2023 All Rights Reserved
