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".
用黑白的影像呈现出一个9岁小男孩童年在家乡贝尔法斯特那段改变人生的过往。我个人觉得一些曾经背井离乡，迁徙或移民到其他地方生活的人会特别有共鸣。特别是已经进入中年、老年的人，生活已经稳定下来，更容易回顾往昔与家人和邻里相处的时光
哈哈哈哈为什么我一点都没想到罗马，因为太差了吗？我觉得还行呀，轻轻松松呗。
像是《罗马》但又不一样 相同的可能都只是导演对童年的怀念 一开始的空镜我好喜欢 虽然故事不太吸引我可是画面很喜欢
7.2 负角度航拍、大仰拍和带天花板、频繁阑珊前景遮挡表示社会环境、跳跃在不同主体不同部分的长镜头、镜头内变速升格、景框的大量使用。孩童视角、个人化的内容，黑白表记忆，穿插影视印象、想象化对社区的留念，一种猛然边做异乡人失去家乡的处境，民族宗教排异的环境中呼唤真情。开头的街道展示复杂多变的运动设计还是不错的。总体形式风格大于思想内容。
相比于罗马，我更喜欢这部，罗马对于我来说太遥远了，根本共情不上去，我所拥有的童年更像是贝尔法斯特，爱我的亲人和朝夕相处的邻居，最后一次搬家结束了整个童年。或许电影中很多东西比较俗，但正是这种俗使我感到亲切，以及创作者对童年与故乡的纯粹怀念。
演母亲的演员有点像莫妮卡·贝鲁齐和苏菲·玛索的集合体。
每个镜头都经过精心设计，给人影片毫无起伏的感觉，抓不到重点，没有可共情视点
11h30 02/03/2022 à l’Utopia BDX
这片子，其实画面拍的还蛮有厚度的。故事与主旨的话，看大家说是致敬自己的童年，自己的家乡。那其实已经避免了很多残酷血腥的暴力，更着重于美好的故事以及家人之间的相守与推动。还可以吧…比《西区故事》好看！哈哈哈
每个镜头都经过精心设计，给人影片毫无起伏的感觉，抓不到重点，没有可共情视点
这小男孩怎么这么油腻
片中父亲提出要举家搬迁到英格兰生活，却遭到母亲坚决反对，反对理由是不想让孩子因为爱尔兰口音被同龄人嘲讽，但实际上是母亲自己不愿离开故乡。作为中国人，这就根本不是个问题。这种情况放在国内，还争什么啊，父母全都去海对岸工作了，留个祖孙相依为命的留守家庭。
6.5/10 摄影尤其是构图当然很精致，也描绘出自己对贝尔法斯特难以割舍的情怀，一个充满人情味的城镇跃然幕上，但终究还是太私人了，或许会因为某一段的纯真与质朴发笑，但远远未能达到入戏的程度。
记忆会为一个人选择他永远的故乡和家园。用黑白影像着意雕琢的时间质感和老工业国家平民阶层的鲜活淳朴气息，在本片中还算比较和谐地融合在一起，围绕是否离乡这一核心事件铺展推动的主线也流畅清晰，一些情绪抒发的细节场景呈现得相当动人，小男孩对爷爷说“我希望你和奶奶也在”的自然和真挚以及结尾落在奶奶面庞引发的无奈、理解和某种忏悔都独具力道，可跻身年度时刻。但视角的不统一和整体的浪漫化处理，也使影片的糖衣过厚，特别是结尾暴乱危机和爷爷纪念聚会两场重场戏的设计和呈现实在太过陈旧和想当然，有点自降其格。与[罗马]远不是一个量级也远不是一类电影，卡隆通过回忆记起了整个时代，而肯尼思·布拉纳则在回忆中与自己进行了和解。
人生面临的无尽选择啊..and say in thankfulness that you are grateful he was there瞬间泪目..ps. bgm真好听
三星半，多半星给部分初衷。。。
乱世，童年，小城故事，看到很多乡愁电影的影子，儿时记忆零零散散，中间的波折与成长有些许草率，很多场景不免有堆砌符号之嫌，但小主演非常非常好。
2.5 宗教，故土，诙谐，哲理，爱与分离，以这种近PPT方式呈现，浪费情感，削弱共鸣。
或是纪念，或是反省，那个青年人随时有可能被枪杀于街头的年代，现在很多国家，都在用电影来描述。
躲在一楼桌子底下的那些人，以及孩子他妈带子冒死还洗衣粉这脑子有问题吧。还有就是过于平淡，以至于看得我没感到愤怒或者悲伤。演得都挺一般的，得不了演员的那些奖项。
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