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".
看完特意到百度百科查了下“叛逆期”的定义，然后想象一下自己女儿。
跟瀑布一样都聚焦于疫情下的母女关系，演员很细腻真实，整体算是流畅好看，但是结尾有些仓促粗糙，包括铺陈多时的演讲与跨文化议题嘎然而止，情绪得不到像瀑布的蓝色幕布拉掉一样的释放。
情感碰撞激烈到莫名其妙。 母亲承受着生理和心理双重痛苦，还要打理一家人的生活，大女儿偏偏最恨这个处处对她照顾有佳的妈妈，叛逆期也不是这种叛逆法好嘛？天天恨母亲为什么从美国回来为什么情绪消极低落，拜托你妈得了重病好嘛？我从一开始看老师体罚小姑娘气的要死到后面爸爸打她恨不得冲进去帮着打是为什么？情感铺垫太过单薄，情绪冲突又太过火，这电影就是靠虐一位母亲来传达什么人生理念吗？
如果不是SARS 我可能还看不出来这是什么年代的戏 不论台湾还是美国 二十年来都挺遥远的 也就周杰伦的那首《安静》 二十年来一直不变地流行着
结局有点乏力，但还是比想象中好。看的过程中数度为芳仪感到痛苦——被迫回到中式打压教育中来的女孩，她要强迫自己接受外界的羞辱，并对此感到不以为然，父母和孩子都面对着人生中各自的问题，还要努力拼凑成一个完整的家，这真是太难了。现在长大后以成年人的视角来看片中的孩子难免会觉得她完全不体谅妈妈，会为她脱口而出的伤人话语感到讶异，但当自己还是个孩子时是很难跳出自己的视角来看待母亲的，这又是一种矛盾的困境。
第3452-影片可看，演员表现都不错。
这才应该得金马最佳剧情片和最佳女主角吧！数度眼眶泛泪！
7/10.
大陆的《小伟》+新加坡的《爸妈不在家》。去年到现在第一部让我有些感动到泪目的片子，某些片段与我的生活重叠了，这也是我们这边很少看到的吧。但整体比较平庸温和，结局还行，有点赶。
这个家庭的四个成员每个人都哭过。其实两个孩子的哭只是人生的小插曲，而两个大人的哭才是人生的主题歌。
*1小时19分的那段冲突，大家都演的很好，类似的场面似乎也曾发生在我身上，很揪心很真实，那一巴掌好像打在我脸上过
家不是总围绕着爱展开，爱与恨是一体两面的存在，时恨时爱。导演的细腻深入家里的每一处，妈妈的悲观脆弱把家庭搅成一锅乱粥，在移民的文化背景下大女儿的水土不服再添加一把火，生活不断下坠，下坠的过程让彼此才能联结的更深。
7.5，果然女性导演才能洞察到这种母女之间的情感。最有感触的，是女儿对母亲的“恨及抱怨”，这种情感就像老师说的那样，爱和恨有时候是一体两面。
前半部分看得喘不过气，看到了大多数华人家庭的通病明明很爱却不擅长表达爱，全剧最会表达爱也时刻在说爱的大概就是妹妹了吧。
-我只是觉得她可以做的更好。
片尾曲是陈绮贞的《尽在不言中》。
知道它欠缺在哪里可是……丝丝入扣，针针入肉。林嘉欣太好了。
2021年度最佳华语片。比期待中还要好。节奏平稳，没有故意煽情。最后半小时开始哭到不行。东亚家庭的孩子都会有的共鸣。导演真的很棒，在生死议题的大框架下，有文化的碰撞，有文化的对立，有家庭里成人与小孩的无法沟通。从任性的不给妹妹妈妈开门，到结尾的主动打开门。用了一整个影片的时间来告诉我们在东亚文化里，爱，是如何被表达的。导演将自己要表达的点，融合得非常好，每一个节奏的交替都是那么的平稳自然。有时候爱真的就是一体两面的东西。爸爸在最后，蹲在楼梯间里哭泣的戏份，让人内心被狠狠戳中，一个父亲的眼泪，一个怕失去妻子的丈夫的眼泪，是那么的难能可贵。的确有时候有的时候我们总觉得父母不能做的更好，可有没有想过，这已经是她们能给我们最好的了。最后，她明白了家的概念，也明白了原来，爱是那么的无声
这几年一些港台片有一种很相似的大光圈气质…
影片核心命题，是关于长姐方仪的身份认同问题，以台湾身份和美国生活经历的失衡感，来呈现这种身份的模糊不定，带给一个家庭的影响。当然，有关身份认同问题，夫妻两个人的生活、工作环境，隐喻了台海两岸错综复杂的关系，比如妻子为了两个女儿成长，虽为台湾人但寻求美国更好的成长环境，而丈夫为了生计、讨生活不得已往返两岸。小女芳安则在片中近乎没有讲一句中文，她代表了完全西化、美式台湾人。方仪控诉母亲“因为你从来没有好好生活过”，对其罹患乳癌消极悲观的生命观，表达女儿的愤恨与不满。这本身就与传统文化当中的尊师敬重的礼仪所不符，因此，方仪这种文化、身份的冲突感，更加强烈。而最终母女和解戏码，大概是在于父亲的引导与暗示，方仪对美国的依赖，是一种现实生活的逃避。这在更大层面上，隐喻当今台湾与美国间的复杂且微妙的关系。
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