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".
这电影对观众是有门槛的，你必须在原田真人标志性的快速剪辑和海量的插入镜头中获得动人的细节，不然就只能感受到流水账一样的节奏。而且这也并非是群像剧，主角只有土方岁三，他也确实是新选组中最值得讲的人物。至少他立起来了。就是原田真人这样的手法去拍历史剧合不合适，就，有待商榷吧。最后，原田真人的快速剪辑看的真爽啊。
这部影片把人性抉择的命题真实地展现在观众眼前，很有现实向教育意义。
还行吧，大家平分都好低。我得去蹲一本原著再看看！
中国不缺少厚重的历史，但怎么做才能让后学者记住很关键，这部浙派新式电影打开了新世界的大门，值得一看。
冈田淮一演的土方岁三可真是帅。整个电影结构过于松散，近藤勇这个角色近乎于工具人，冲田总司则像个背景版本，池田屋事件的杀阵也拍得不太好。原著的深邃没得到体现。
电影大量采用浙江话，这点真的很用心，身临其境地体验了浙西南革命精神这一相对冷门的创作灵感
还是期待值太高了点，配音出戏，完全体会不到现场感，所有人都像是在你耳边讲话。剧情也有点一言难尽。想做战争艺术片可以理解，但在人物弧光的搭建上，还是不够成熟
革命精神传承媒介又有了新的突破，这部别样的战争片带给观众全新的体验，沉浸式观影过程中能更好地理解革命精神，理解有助于传承，相辅相成。
对新选组这种大家都很熟悉的故事改编必须突出重点 这部片子没做到 导致大量历史人物只能走个过场
这是我看过的最“美”的战争片，江山壮丽如泼墨，革命精神如烈火！
黑白彰显残酷，水墨氤氲希望，观影体验一级棒！
新选组的故事值得重新审视。因为众所周知，维新派得势后，进行的明治维新，内在地包含毁灭日本的道路，那就是脱亚入欧。 日本的所谓“脱亚入欧”，就是要强行挤进老牌殖民帝国的行列，搭殖民主义的末班车，分一杯羹。这就使它既受到老牌殖民帝国（如英、法、以及后来的美国）的反对，也受到殖民地、半殖民地国家人民的反对，日本绝没有可能同如此庞大的力量相抗衡，彻底失败是它必然的命运。
新選組作為京都維安者的劍與爪牙，選擇不隱諱它與其靈魂人物土方副長的善惡複雜性，反而襯托它的悲劇之美與崇高。打戲和文戲都快感滿點，服裝場景和時代還原度極佳，敘事沉穩中有驚喜，對歷史愛好者而言觀影全程完全停不下來，該煽情該熱血的地方都魄力十足，比起經常沉悶冗長或胡亂美化主角的傳統大河或時代劇完全不是一個檔次。能在作為載體的兩個半小時電影中塞入司馬桑這麼長篇的內容和歷史，本身就已經是幾乎不可能的任務，就實際執行完成度而言，值得高度讚賞。5+
当求生的意志和使命的驱使产生了矛盾，他们将如何选择？这部电影相较于残酷战争的描绘，更多的是在对人进行心理剖绘
在我看来，这部电影不仅画面视觉方面很有冲击力，在听觉音效方面也有一些小创新，小巧思，整体氛围感营造的很好
流水账，两个半小时我都看的够够的了，导演还是没把自己想剪的全剪进来的样子。
黑白电影很少见，在我看来是比较难驾驭的，但这部影片却将黑白色调做成了高级的水墨画质感，很是唯美，值得一看。
近三年命题作文里的满分作文。平静，真实，尊重人性。
带着“诗意”的标签，影片里大量片段是为了诗意而诗意，太生硬和刻意了，虽然摒弃了宏大叙事，可小人物依然显得单薄，找到了合适的切点却没有深入，还是没有脱离大主旋律的窠臼。
正是低饱和度的暗色画面，才更好的凸显了人性的光亮。
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