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".
一部韩国反朱子儒学，反愚忠愚孝的电影，在普通水平以上。给5星是让那群眼瞎的傻逼看看，你拍不出来这样的电影，你也不关心人民疾苦
其实我觉得弟子仔细挖掘会比现在有意思的多。他向老丁学习时的心态是什么？真的专心学四书五经吗？还是有私心兼学西学独辟蹊径呢？他爹第一次没理他毕竟是因为他功课差的太远了。
信什么道、读什么书、走什么路都是次要的，重要的是在世事混沌中把住本性，并且永远不要让自己的无知变成偏执。
有点在看万历十五年的感觉，关于程朱心学和儒家官场的表述浅了一些，几百年的文人官僚主义不是说这种简单的二元对立可以概括的。也不是说万恶的封建主义就可以推脱的。一个看上去如此剥削的制度能顺利的运行这么久不是说完全一无是处的。电影里关于这方面的讨论浅了些，但对于同属儒家文化圈的我们，有确实就是进步。导演最后还是采取了消极避世的态度啊。
在信仰不同的极端关系下，人们能因为知识和品德成为了亦师亦友的忘年交，两人之间的拌嘴从激烈到打趣，关系转变的方式很巧妙。
「牛逼」二字我已经说累了，前半段告诉我们，知识改变命运，后半段告诉我们，知识改变个屁！嘴上的主义，心里的生意，在大自然的智慧面前，人类是如此的丑陋。
对于在体制内看到黑暗，对人性失望，初心泯灭的描绘从来不会过时。在极端恶劣的生存环境中，还有平常百姓所熟知，但上流阶级无法体验的新鲜美味。西学和朱子并不冲突，佛儒和科技也不是完全对立的关系，它们可以是并肩而行的伙伴
可能是近期看过的最好的韩国电影，冲淡中和，东方风韵，对于儒家传统的反思、在一个中西碰撞的时代发生在思想深处的灵魂拷问，可惜并不能在国产片中看到这些，另，竟然被薛景求和大妈的爱情故事打动了
故事线承接思悼，讲述辛酉迫害之局部…设置多个二元对立的表达法，天主教义与程朱理学对立，兄弟对立，师徒对立，儒家士大夫道德追求与官僚体系对立…风景大好，叙事可惜浅白造作了些…
儒学反思拍得真好，只是后半段显得过于意料之中了，也许是师徒的一种循环吧。看了热评第一条更加感慨，自己拍不出好东西却依然留着莫名的自大。
5/10。正剧喜剧化，想到同样黑白摄影的《影》，我更喜欢张艺谋那种装模作样范，并且这部的视听完全是古早电视剧水平。我已经脑补到邓超搭档陈道明拍一部中国师生情金鸡八项提名了。
妈呀，一如既往的李濬益，看完满足感不亚于《东柱》。小卞真就一身贵气，五官太优越，好想看他演贵族哈哈哈。黑白真的可惜了既看不到鱼又看不到景555
韩国人，有点东西。人类总习惯性设定太多对立，永远在争执孰是孰非，而事实上对真理和世间大义的追求，无论今昔俗洋往往殊途同归。翻译不错，电影更好。
节奏太慢，视听太扯，或许剧情是好的，但我没那个耐心看俩小时的电影就讲这个东西，建议做个播客/写本书，电影还是算了吧。
我也更加坚信世人千万种人性本不同，
黑山成了兹山，海胆里飞出蓝色的鸟，出世入世的师徒就像污泥里的白鹤，捕鱼作诗水墨映趣，又留下对大道恒久的追问。三星半，鞭策华语片不无道理。
若铨说:比起参透善变难懂的复杂人类，
电影蛮好的，但是说有多么多么牛逼倒是没觉得，艺术性一般，内容上不错，但也称不上世界顶级，还是更喜欢刺客聂隐娘那种装逼片
“村里每发生一件伤心事，海螺就发出声响”，这世上有那么多海螺，每一个都有声响。
可能是从师徒二人各自成家开始意境急转直下，黑白画面倒是遮掩了一些尴尬。
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