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".
香蕉人很可怕，中二病也很可怕，香蕉加中二更是，唉
并没有什么特别的地方，不知道为什么室内镜头都那么暗
每一个在经历子女青春期的父母都只能抚摸额头、黑线、叹气吗
感情表达很细腻，也有跟着落泪。不过好像只是在表达，意义并不深刻。结尾也有点突然结束，人物形象立的不是很饱满。（然后想想没有孩子应该不会这么愁吧，林嘉欣还是好美好美）
如果我是这位妈妈，我不知道自己还能不能活得下去。年轻和美国梦破碎，健康与容颜凋零，爱情与婚姻岌岌，母女亲情相爱相杀，每一种关系都令人窒息，都是不能承受的重。
不及预期。远置疫症背景，浅表文化议题，核心还是围绕家庭关系做文章，新意欠奉。论主题表达与时下性的确败于老练的钟孟宏，但细节处理与表演上又甩开《瀑布》一大截。
妈妈：“如果没有你们俩我真的还有很多别的选择” so true
3.印象深刻的地方：姐姐考试得52分，被老师处罚，内心想抗争却不得不向现实低头妥协；两个女儿给爸爸染发的时候，一家人很温馨；
导演的才华够不上她的雄心，说实话，现在这群创作者似乎只会在某种框架下创作。那你写得再好，也散发着腐朽的八股文的气息。
-我只是觉得她可以做的更好。
爆感同身受😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭为他人（家人）着想总是需要敏感 敏感就容易受伤；但自私也容易受伤。家人与地域的认同过程里 也是爱和恨的并行
华语文化圈特有的家庭关系，心有白马的我们逃不脱亲情的温暖与束缚，爱与恨确实一体两面，两个女儿的英语真地道啊！
单调却真诚，倾注了沉甸甸的生命体验，刻骨铭心。每一次争吵后混杂着温情和痛苦的余震，对身边人乃至对自己的恨意的反复回荡，当这些真实可感甚至能唤醒记忆的情感的时候，再多技巧都显得多余。
妈妈真的又温柔又坚韧😢从这部电影你就能看到普通台湾家庭和大陆家庭的区别，尽管大家都受到传统的亚洲文化的影响，但她们能很坦然地说出“妈妈爱你”。
前期把所有问题都暴露在观众面前 自私控制欲贫穷身份认同 最后仅用亲情化解所有有点偷懒 二女儿更讨喜
点开拖进度条看了两眼，受不了：1.林嘉欣气若游丝躺在病床上问老公要不要买房（what？你们没买房就生了2个小孩？）；2.老公给小孩煮饭，小孩嫌难吃，老公生气——真的是烦死这种无能爹了，2022年了ball ball各位导演不要再描述男的的无能了，非要写的话请把他们统统写死
很青涩，很普通，却也很细腻。说不上哪里好，甚至可以说少了些灵气，但似乎有那么些时刻，我们都像外来者，与家庭与周遭格格不入。想完整听女儿的信。3.5
一个不算新鲜的主题，不管是非典，乳腺癌，“美国女孩”还是家庭，其实都是关于家庭关系错位的成长故事，明线是女孩的青春期，暗线则回归家庭
现在你该知道了吧，这个世界就像怎么也戴不上的马嚼子大部分时候并不以你的意志为转移，无论你需要或者不需要什么。
最后一场打斗戏份和马棚独角戏太出色了，积聚了全片的负能量和伤感如潮水涌向观众。每个角色都有无以名状的怨气，无处释放，发人深省
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