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".
拍得很极简，演员没得说，有些让人没完全看懂才是拉丁片
#VIFF2021 三星半。非常过火癫狂的喜剧，选景和构图大赞。虽然名字叫主竞赛，但却没啥电影节片子的调调，看似是对演艺圈光怪陆离乱象的讽刺，夸张到极致反而是对文艺工作者奉献自我的讴歌。另外，片中三位主演都有不同程度的自我解构以及自身经历的投射，其中班德拉斯最为出彩。最后希望那些用互联网产品的思维来做影视的“大佬”都来看看这片：当你对于行业一无所知还撒手不管，可是会出人命的哦～
对全球电影行业的辛辣讽刺 冲奖派明星与清高派艺术家的对决 最初关注到这部电影只是因为这部叫主竞赛的电影入围了威尼斯主竞赛hhh 然而比起全程高能的剧情这点噱头简直不算啥 就不在此过多剧透了 导演对电影艺术的看法、对观众的期望已经要溢出屏幕了 感受到了如今电影寒冬下业内人士的呐喊与不满 潘潘和班德拉斯献出了很颠覆但超精彩的表演 就算路人观众对情节不够有共鸣 二人的飙戏看起来也绝对过瘾
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。
从杰出公民以来，两位导演合作的越来越差，笑点包袱创意都挺足的，结果真正涉及到主竞赛才这么一点，坐拥几位大明星，演这个本子是真的吃力不讨好
题外话：看到别人在自己面前眼睁睁的死了 还是被撞死的 这心理压力得多大啊..
挺有趣的 专门讽刺电影从业者的喜剧 威尼斯戛纳圣塞等知名国际电影节的奖杯被扔进机器粉碎掉 是电影节影迷的high点了 荒诞喜剧的核心是 一个人越想做什么事 最后反而做不到 且另一个人不费吹灰之力就做到了
人为设计太明显 玩命挤兑所谓的人性 最后强行表现出一种虚假的良善 从新闻时间到自以为是的电影 中间隔着无数导演未曾经历的细碎真挚的生活
三星半，看完极强的不适感。说不出哪里的问题，只是里面的每个人都让人感到不适，少女、父母、店长、女店员、老师、司机……每个人都扭曲和虚弱，让人厌恶由他们组成的社会。
被家长权威蒙蔽双眼的父亲、长期压抑自己的女孩、机械教育的老师、唯唯诺诺的超市经营者，感情缺失的中年妇女……每个人都是向内坍塌，于是每件事都理不出头绪。这电影十分讽刺地将日本社会过度道歉却欠缺内省的一面刻画了出来。
尾巴有点垮，但真的好好玩！我喜欢！我爱佩内洛普！
对电影行业讽剌的很辛辣，三位主演的表现极佳
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。
好看！介于文艺和商业之间，非常电影节的节奏，流畅精彩！
出于职业情怀，给个满星评价吧。
对当今影视行业的吐槽嘲讽，一切起因是资本家想名留青史，结果搞得导演崩溃演员互掐，电影行业不易啊
一个事件的连锁反应，不错的点子和故事。但从恶意到善意的过渡有点不太自然，击中人心的力量就弱了点点。
很压抑…搞垮一个有良知的人实在太容易了 反而像父亲这样的人才会把痛苦都转嫁给别人身上以此来逃避自己对女儿生前的刻薄冷漠
即使是探讨舆论暴力、道德困境这样的话题，内在的情感依旧能保持温和克制，我觉得这是日本文化的力量。这个故事也让我们看到法律或者道德的局限性。以及，艺术对拯救人心的作用。
少女的死亡是意外，但伤害却是由各方面共同造成的，其中最过分的就是扭曲真实煽风点火的媒体。就像如今。
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