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".
存在主义心理治疗。往前游，就是海。是呀，枫树的小翅膀真的很可爱。
是不是讲纽约的电影都要来迫害一下尼克斯？
老牌鸡汤，陈年精酿。最后投胎去了四川？美国人最大的问题就是，觉得不能去做自己梦想中的事情就已经是人生最大的苦难了。Truth is they know nothing about suffering. 所以备受精神小布尔乔亚们的喜爱太正常了。
为自己鼓掌。
★★★★☆ 4.5，结局如果遁入虚空更加合理，激情下单《bullshit job》了。弯腰告诉小妹妹：“最后只有一个小人儿说话，没有其他彩蛋了，如果想等的话也可以再等等～”的长辫子工作人员小哥好帅！
鸡汤还是同一样的灌法，但是换了不一样的味道，不再谈什么目标梦想，开始劝人“活在当下”。可这种“放下执念”的心安理得，究竟是踏遍千山以后的返璞归真，还是求之不得时的麻醉疗法？
四星半。很惊人，竟然在这样一部看似过年全家欢的动画电影里看到那么多令中年人心有戚戚的人生话题。水与大海之辨是近两年缠绕我最深的泥淖，在庸碌而无法摆脱的生活中默默忍受，总希望有一个神迹般的拐点出现，从此如池水入沧海。其实神迹无处不在。Spark不是人被先天赋予的终极意义，那样生命本身就沦为了一个工具，它是在这美好又糟糕的世界中体会到“活着真好”的那一刻，也许来源自音乐，也许是一块美味的披萨，也许是秋日阳光透过梧桐叶照在脸上的一瞬，翅果如天使般飞向你。“追寻本身也是一种盲视”，打开对生活的感官吧。视觉效果非常舒适，迪士尼和皮克斯的技术当然值得信赖，心灵之境的触感应该很不错，但还是太喜欢纽约秋日街道，光影的处理值得一看再看。
講了一個非常淺顯易懂甚至於過於簡單的道理。不能否認這個故事本身特別好，但如果能再慢一點，再展開一點就更完美了。
这句话我记挂了很多年，还曾把它小心翼翼贴在本子上。这是当时我认为于我来说最为贴切的评语。那些年，我做什么事总是“只差一点点”，“前方迷雾”的感觉贯穿我的生活。
工整的命题作文 口碑电影果然契合大众 still美国梦still现实主义still这套机制 规范 等级；我青春期or再小点会偏向写的 看的东西；22铁intp过于相似。不过此时我只想问，如果你也像22 完整经历过类似的一套模式内核，看到这种内容会感到尴尬无措/无奈/本能抗拒/缄默吗。对于所谓的存在危机 人难道只有0次或重复回溯自溺吗，可以超越那个1 创造新的+let it go吗 ？我选move forward，并且不想不会不必多言（另 爵士乐大法好
初生的草，翻开书本的第一页，爱情的开始，发动机开启发出的一阵嗡嗡。你在寻找的意义和目的，打从一开始就随你相伴。听风过耳，就已值得出世为人。
本以为是想讲人要寻找追求自己的梦想，而我几乎陷入了22一样的惶恐，惊喜于电影最后带给我一个不一样的答案 — maybe life’s purpose is just living it. 有时候人生也许并不像计划般的一往无前，这时候随性而为jazzing it也并无不可，天空中飘过的云，风中缓缓飘下的叶子，温暖的阳光，美味的披萨，就是生活的sparks，这也是让我撑过今年的sparks.
2020.12.27 我一定会记住观看这部影片的上午，在生活无意义消解的时候，就当历经过生死，在死亡中寻找灵魂的火花，再死而复生，重又活过，忘了那来时的路，但记住未来的承诺。
为何可以完全绕过种族和医保制度，很不习惯啊。虽然后面一直在催泪但没催下来。Richard Ayoade哈哈哈。
人生的目的不重要，享受过程～皮克斯还是这么会讲故事。
I love jazz！把经典的迪士尼片头改成了烦人的freeJazz就搞笑。新年第一天以这样的电影开场我很满意。人活一次，不是为了一定要做什么成为什么，而是因为你曾经为了这个世界而心动过，就算遗忘了这件事也没关系，在这个世界的某个角落，一直都存在着让你留恋并心甘情愿付出无限热情的东西。
没有给出答案，不必给到具体的答案。“灵魂不会被压垮，压垮你的是生活啊。”这是一部“打工人”之歌，并不童话，有门槛，2021奥斯卡最佳动画片非他莫属。无论怎样，热爱你所热爱，享受珍惜当下的生活。看的有点压抑，但又都get到它的点。想起《寻梦环游记》，故事上弱了一些，但依然是年度佳片。
死了就是死了，活着才重要，皮克斯是见不得真正的痛苦的，从来跳不出腻歪的世界观
太治愈了。看看天空，闻闻花香，经历每一天平凡的奇迹，生命是多么的奇妙。
无甚新意。打出高分的大抵是尚未堪破人生奥义的青少年吧 - 自觉「怀才不遇」的那些尤甚。按理说男主设定37岁，资质平平，泯然众人，早该觉悟并拥抱平凡亦可韵味的生活，却还要经历这番奇遇曲折才得了菩提，大概是此前被老母亲保护得太好吧。（话说回来，这年头连动画片都来教大家deal with ordinary living了，时局不可谓不艰难。）
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