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".
3，不少的段落让我真心感到孩童的吵闹和恼人，所以近年自己是否适合生儿育女要值得商榷了
好棒的电影处女作。the lost daughter 不如说是the lost mother。女人一旦成为母亲，这个角色就要背负一生，不管是爱自由爱学术天生自私，简直无处逃离。
所以你才有那么多微妙的、自己都讲不清楚的行为，那个你拿走、藏起、又主动拿出来、并且交代是自己拿走的娃娃，你是想对年轻时的决绝做一次提线木偶的模拟，强行对女孩制造分离、对母亲制造焦虑，让她们不再体验你曾经体验的一切或者重新体验你曾经体验的一切？还是你非要借由一次主动放任的恶意，去对人性深处的那座冰山，做一次同归于尽式的探底？
#LFF 旁边坐着一位孕妇 好奇她为什么来看这部片子
喜欢电影的一些感觉（费兰特文字描写的感觉，拉出来一个片段是值得回味的，整个一起就让人吃不消）。女性在家庭，母职，爱情/欲望和自我之间的拉扯。费兰特不是个特别擅长处理细腻情感的人（她没有一个清晰的自我去化解这些），她的感情都是浓稠的一块儿，但她可以把这种浓稠呈现出来。
还不错的片子，有些地方刻画人物非常细腻。冲着导演（我喜欢）和原著作者（更喜欢）给了四颗星。
设置两组母女做对照是基本操作了，但一人孤身去外地游玩，被一大家子人包围这种惊悚片的桥段，在女性题材里则可能是首次尝试，这种氛围的营造也是本片最大的亮点。对片名的呼应处理的很自然，女儿的失踪、玩具的失踪、母亲的失踪串起了整个主线。就其表达的主题，个人还是倾向于表现身为人母的压力，否定人人都能成为好母亲的必然性。缺点一方面是生活琐事的力度不够，女主一系列行为还不够有说服力，另一方面就是节奏和对话的确很生硬，构图里面虚焦特别多，不成熟的感觉非常明显。
压抑的情绪加上悬疑的气氛让人如坐针毡，可能也是母亲内心最真实的刻画。
好棒的电影处女作。the lost daughter 不如说是the lost mother。女人一旦成为母亲，这个角色就要背负一生，不管是爱自由爱学术天生自私，简直无处逃离。
很压抑的片子，在希腊本该阳光明媚的海滩上，却有着一个悲伤的故事。女主有自己的事业，想要追求学术，可两个女儿的存在却抑制了她的追求，吵闹捣乱，就像今天在窗外的这些熊孩子，让人心烦意乱，无心做任何事情。女主选择了离家出走，这是一个大胆的选择，抛弃了孩子，从传统视角看放弃母职简直离经叛道，这个选择是正确的吗？显然她也不知道，在海滩上，看着年轻的米娜她就像看到了自己，同样拿孩子一筹莫展，同样在他处寻求解脱（科尔曼和米娜情人的暧昧也是类似关系的投射）。女主走不出了，她固然曾经得到过她想要的，可也背负着沉重的负担，对孩子的爱阻碍了她寻找真的自己，可她又无法彻底和她们切断关系，lost的是女儿，也是她自己。为什么女性就一定要背负这种压力，男性似乎就可以潇洒的离开，还是那句话，没有想好就不要生孩子。
做个正常女人过完正常的一生太难了，尤其在36岁的今天，父母对你还有一些期待，你对未来还有一些幻想，往日的阴影偶袭，往后的种种不确，烦恼不多、不少，足够你惆怅，煎熬。
220115看完，这确实是需要一个人安安静静地看的电影
4/5 惊艳的处女作。恐育阵营的一大力作，对现实生活中婚育女性状态的描写入木三分，犹如影片中那个锋利的帽扣一般刺开被社会大众隐匿的“母亲”角色的困境和悲哀。科尔曼完美契合这一角色，感觉可以冲奥。剧情节奏有些问题，完美错过紧凑和松弛的分界线导致观影体验奇怪宛如一节失去弹性的皮筋，配乐很赞，是属于那种不会再看第二遍的现实主义佳作。
隐忍隐忍再隐忍 压抑压抑更压抑 对女儿的回忆全都充斥着聒噪 看了更加不期待生育了。 母亲应该只是一个选择 为何社会把它设为了必选项。以前看过一篇文章叫《我后悔成为母亲 但我不敢说》大概是想表达同一个意思 母亲是很伟大 但请不要剥夺母亲作为独立个体仍然会有自己的追求。
从《天才女友》到这部，从书到剧到电影，完全看不下去。费兰特的作品真是挑性别，太有意思了。
经常想起小时候面对班里的小混混们手足无措的我，无论我的骄傲还是眼泪都是他们嬉笑的对象。一整个巨大的结构性困境完全压在女性身上，任何美好的特质都会成为被攻击的特点。我们在缝隙中战斗，我们仍然保持敏锐的感受，我们仍然书写，我们继续活下去。
后半部分一直在想，两位母亲的特征和她们的相处方式简直像是青年莉拉遇见中年艾莱娜，看到片尾惊讶地发现竟然真的是改编自艾莱娜·费兰特的同名小说！这样一来，玛吉演员转导演好像也没做明白瞬间变得不重要了，毕竟自省如费兰特，在写作时都脱离不了自我重复。
我本来喜欢一切揭示孩子的可怖面貌的电影。可是片中闪回的运用低级得如同沙丘。沙丘中，只有不断堆砌赞达亚的神秘，主角才有向前的动机；本片中，只有堆砌过往的烦躁与伤痛，扣曼的选择才有说服力。
Maggie犹如写散文一般创作了这部作品，情绪高于故事。如此女性，如此细腻。
好奇女演员的导演处女作，看的时候屡屡想到费兰特，也在想这个片子的文字表达，看完发现改的是她的小说。
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