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".
首先，对我来说，这是一部差点因为“”同性标签就错过的电影，我不反同也不恐同，但对目前席卷全球的各种正确，导致不管什么片都要往正确上靠一靠——比如黑命贵等，很反胃。//接下来感叹导演之水准，不管别人怎么看这部片，对我来说，我感觉到了古龙的意味，对，就是古龙——不是金庸。怎么说呢，就那种真正的狠角色，往往是看上去单薄的，不起眼的，不动声色一刀毙命的。而真正脆弱的，往往是看上去很凶残的。//我从来没喜欢过本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇 ，但这部片，我觉得演得非常好。
太失望了。无可挑剔的画面，无聊的故事，只有音乐让螺丝拧紧。不懂为什么要分段。
太依靠音乐了，镜头和文本没给信息，看的莫名其妙，人物都有点大病
我都忘记电影可以有这么带人进入的感觉了。一开始只觉得这人怎么这么 mean，我是不是审判模式开得太多了 _(:3TZ)_
导演把人和人之间那种压抑和张力拉扯的气氛都做到了极致（尴尬癌的我每看一段都想暂停一会儿），故事本身值得思考和挖掘的面向很丰富（base在原著的基础上吧），但从头到尾营造氛围太用力暗示太多略有点刻意不自然。
电影不动声色地展现了“阳刚”如何驯化压迫着男性，又如何被“阴柔”反击折杀。蛇蝎美少年，利用“皮绳上的魂”，兵不血刃。被谋害的菲尔是令人同情的，不仅仅是因为卷福滤镜，更在于他本身是男子气概的牺牲品。感性地说，爱才是杀人不见血的利器。“这么多年的痴心，终究是错付了。”
开局一直很紧张，故事的走向有点迷，以为是暴力系，没想到是暗黑系。
本片教育我们，中年男子迷恋年轻狗狗是没有好结果的
“求你救我的灵魂脱离刀剑，救我的生命脱离犬类。”The power of the dog，是恶犬之力，是难以对抗的保守环境，是看似平静生活下叵测的人心。整部电影的剧情叙述上没有太大起伏，但却将每个人的力量暗含在故事中，无论是看似呆板的乔治、酗酒为生的罗斯，还是因性格被欺负的彼得，当然还有带着秘密度日的菲尔。每个人的力量在这片荒漠之地上相互纠缠，直到最后那场无声却精准的暗杀。因为爱变成了冷漠严苛的牛仔，却也因为对爱走上了死亡的陷阱，在保守与暗流涌动的世界活着本就很难，愿你走后能寻得自由的灵魂。
男性之力，包括强权之力和强壮之力。本片凸出了男性的强权之力，也顺带辩证地观赏男性的强壮之力。男权体系之下，阴柔与出柜都成了绝对禁忌，对心灵的长期囚禁造就了阴暗世界的传承，男人与男孩也便成了镜像一般的存在。故事内核方面，与戛纳大热的《钛》殊途同归，热衷于把控世界的阳刚之气，放不下对强权的臣服，涂炭了人本来的爱与善良，杀敌一百，自损三千。欧美的学院系统好像越来越关注人类个体情感的自处，这比一味追求“价值正确”要高级很多，也进步了很多。
弟弟爱上寡妇，拖上一儿子，寡妇跟哥哥不合，类似婆媳之争。寡妇的儿子跟哥哥，暧昧不清的同志关系。一分钟的狗血抖音恶心剧情，好评率刷的吗？黑绿同，奥屎卡！
影片平整波澜不惊，需要有耐心，才能看完的，不建议分次看。
解构男性、解构力量。一对兄弟的生活里，闯入了一对母子，哥哥跟所有人宣战，被弱鸡儿子反杀。故事的切入点蛮好，像皮特割牛皮的小刀，精准而致命，有很丰富的解读空间。再看简姨的电影颇有些感慨，这类画面精致、文本严谨、主题古典、一丝不苟的电影越来越少了，大家也不那么爱看了。
看到一半以为是一部西部版的Call Me By Your Name，结果是西部同性版的Phantom Thread。用一种很克制的方式讲了一个很跌宕很有冲突的故事，导演太会了。
是好看的。好像很久以前就被剧透了一点点关于 Phil 的事情，反而起了作用帮助进入故事，觉得节奏正好。但其实是开头的陈述很不克制，特别是提琴声撩拨情绪，导致让人以为有险象环生的心理惊悚，看到终章可能会觉得小题大作。但在Phil 的视角之内，其实是个救赎故事。他试图用肮脏暴虐伪装起的心墙，最后得以平复光洁安宁。
片子挺妙，但又没有让我特别着迷的点，感觉更适合用细腻沉稳描述，没有太多被压抑的情绪，也就无所谓克制，向来对这种叙事清淡的片子有好感，想吐槽克斯汀和杰西越来越夫妻相
悠缓温吞、暮气沉沉地铺展开这些微妙、险恶但又情投意合的人物角色关系。
电影没做过多交代，表面上是乔治依赖他，其实在心理上他依赖弟弟。
卷福和克里斯汀邓斯特等几位演员为我们贡献了本年度最优秀的表演之一，角色之间的戏剧张力（和性张力）如同绷紧的牛皮绳一般，从始至终勒住了观众的喉咙，亦如身后的犬山一般，表面波澜不惊，实则暗潮涌动。卷福值得一个影帝，他把那个用“真男人“气质包裹起来，实则脆弱敏感且长情的菲儿演绎到入骨，他的爱是私人的，不可公之于众的，隐秘又美好的。相比之下，皮特的恋母则更为扭曲，所以本片完全不能草率的界定为同性题材，这是一部关于爱的故事，私有的、扭曲的爱，跟随电影的尾声，猎人和猎物互换，角色所承担的善恶属性瞬间翻转，观众恍然大悟，原来那副惹人生怜的外表下，竟有如此之残酷的内心，曾经的“作恶”之人终于死去，归于犬山。
8.2/10 #NYFF 本质上并不差，语焉不详其实无可指摘，最有魅力的莫过于这般莫名的张力，是幽冥的配乐与模糊的文本的共谋。时间线上的节奏的确模糊，章节的叙事也在前半段显得过缓，造成了“进入”影片的阻碍，但后半段便有柳暗花明之感。关于身份与性别上的波动与不定使得人物的本体失效，只是试图挣脱一种结构中的身份(马夫，妻子，西部新贵，男青年等)，并彼此拉扯(皮特显然成为一种可被塑造的身份，在萝丝和菲尔之间两难)。谈论爱是不恰的，更本质的是孤独与陪伴(逝去的和当下的)，也正与西部的地景契合。手/肢体是另外一层触点：剪出花朵的手亦可以解剖动物，策马的手指亦可以弹奏弦琴，但是具体结构并不算明晰，未能形成如《菊石》中对“触摸”的解构。
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