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".
话说“看电影”大多时候仍是一件私人审美的事啊——看过这么多电影到现在，已经少有哪部新片从开头第一个画面或者第一个音符，就把情绪瞬间拉进去了——可能有的电影其实也没那么好，却贵在真诚——编剧怀着对文字的敬畏用心写下故事，导演怀着对艺术的敬畏尽善尽美调度，而演员怀着对观众的敬畏力求与角色灵魂互换般诠释——被这样精心呵护而长成的电影，既有生动的血肉又有挺拔的内涵，它不惧时光流逝，即使经年之后，依然足以慰藉所有与之邂逅并共情的人。
结局部分就像那场泄洪突然冲下来 然后在平静中让人思考回味
对“为什么是我？”最好的回答是“我们一起好好把日子过下去”
母女关系或者只是一位失婚失业的中年女性走出谷底的过程。但这个观影过程不舒服，情节走的好像很平静，却又时刻在跳脱，这种反差又不像悬疑或者惊悚片有个起码的目的，于是这个情绪好尴尬，以至于贾静雯这个精神病患者的演绎都有点做作了，我觉得是我因为剧情对演员的不公平想法，嗯。
一样的字体，一样的色调，但是喜欢没有了。只觉得事情一路下滑，好像没有什么缓转的地方，就向瀑布飞流直下，落在地上也是最后的重击。没有希望的感觉。
台湾的主旋律让人有温暖和惊悚感，用了未成年人面对成年人世界崩塌之下迅速成长的过程。鸡汤很温暖，但又的确体现于某种很舒适区的感觉，距离真正要讲的那种疼痛无助，总是差了口气
钟孟宏的底色是温馨的，但手法是惊悚的。在钟孟宏的电影里，世界是存在主义的，我们都生活在时代的瀑布里。
想知道是疫情把这些人都逼急了，随便什么都能拿出手，还是其实根本上思维和趣味都在倒退。
去年最好的华语片，第一次感受到钟孟宏拍出了好电影。视听象征有设计感，但在对思觉失调的病人与家人关系的诚挚观察里发挥起妥帖的点题作用。贾静雯最先在臆想里的暴风雨犯病，最终在目睹女儿从一场水灾解救走出而完成治愈，从疫情到水灾，前后都以突如其来的方式袭击生活，神结尾。即便屋外的蓝色帷幕“口罩”摘落后，贾静雯的病情逐渐好转，叙事在阶级跌落和病人的好坏未知中，还是处于一种不确定性走向，这正是好电影需要的不确定性品质。
她们带口罩上面不压住，下面不盖住，看着好难受。
男人可以从婚姻中快进快退，女人却被困住，困到发疯，女儿也被迫捆住，男人的面前有船走路，女人的面前是瀑布，会掉下去
还是很钟孟宏的光影和质感 王净好像文淇 消防员刘冠廷和《火神的眼泪》梦幻联动 蓝色幕布、蛇、口罩、 隔离的生活、隔绝的关系 但电影可能并没有处理好与观众之间的隔与不隔 片尾曲《抉择》值得 但最佳剧情原创剧本就一言难尽
生活像一幅褪色的画 倾斜了再也摆不回原来的样子
前半部分鬼影瞳瞳，然后画面逐渐转向明亮，正当一切向积极方向发展，当头一棒不给这个家庭留下任何希望。
瞻前顾后匠气十足，塞那么多意象与符号生怕影评人或者观众不会给他做注解，中间挂那幅黑泽明的海报更是不知道他要干嘛。如何令拆解贾静雯发疯make sense而不是成为又一个特定语境下的“疯女人”、怎样借女儿的经历来表现生活的重压而不是令双向救赎变成塑料鸡汤，在这部备受赞誉的电影中都表现得平平无奇毫无层次，人物内因的设置更令我个人觉得厌烦。两位女主的表演都是精彩的，也只有这些了。
喜欢瀑布这个意象，且好喜欢电影里有人唱了蔡琴的歌：“也许雨一停我就能再见到你，也许雨该一直下不停。”
8.5/10.
期待比较高，而且断断续续看完，整体不及期待，但风格还是依旧对胃口的那种，个人评分7.5吧，虽不及阳光普照，但绝非最初看到开分的6点几。家里的墙上贴着黑泽明的电影，电视机背后藏着无处躲藏的长蛇，医院墙上画里消失的骑师……很多很多点觉得还是很有意味。“每个人都有难堪的过去，只是大小不同而已。而且未来会怎样，没有人知道。”就像房屋以为就这样卖了，谁知道还是遇上了那个恶狠狠的温暖经理。就像泄洪的激流裹挟，还是绝处逢生，所以don't sweat it，那些让人烦躁的瀑布，也终会成为潺潺溪流。
3.瀑布的意象太牵强了，倒是一直悬在窗外的巨大蓝布比较像是一道隔绝母女的“瀑布”。尤其是结尾这一场河水暴涨戏，几乎是生硬地插入。
整个观看体验要比钟导的前几部作品都要差上许多，不只是因为故事没有《阳光普照》那般流畅，整部片子的剪辑节奏把握的也相当割裂。音乐和摄影依旧好评，都是熟悉的感觉。里面那些惊悚魔怔的片段有些像《失魂》，不得不说钟孟宏独有的恐怖片处理方式。
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