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".
蛮奇妙的，后期阿莫多瓦电影中的奇情越来越温柔、或者说越来越自然。首尾一再出现箭头，即方向，指向议题的两端，性别的、代际历史的、法理与生理的，明明背道而驰，又自发地汇成闭环。一组交织的平行线。
西班牙的房子墙壁颜色很舒服，不是冷淡的白，而是青色。婴儿猝死综合征：睡觉时突然忘记了呼吸。亲子检测、基因检测还有一个用途是辨认去世的前辈，令人感慨。女生被侵犯后怕警察反复询问引起的再次伤害，怕媒体的曝光，选择了沉默，这是一个问题。对战争、对先人不能忘记。“历史永远不会沉默，不论他们如何诋毁，不论他们如何篡改，不论他们如何伪造，人类的历史都拒绝保持沉默。”
阿莫多瓦依然延续他的风格，以一个略狗血略奇情的故事来揭开一段历史的伤疤，将个人情感，家庭观念，上升到民族高度；而在叙事方面，也尽量做了减法，也在戏剧化的程度上尽量舍弃“戏剧性”，观众以为的抓马或撕逼都没有发生，只是冷静地将两个母亲的爱与痛苦表达出来，只是前后两种风格的融合有点割裂，但最后的一镜还是挺震憾的。7.7
4.0 阿莫多瓦神奇之處就在於所有女性角色不管戲份多還是少，在他的電影裡總能緊緊吸引你抓住你的心神，每一個角色都動人。剪輯分寸感太好了（可惜尾段匆忙，隨著與安娜那通電話之後就匆匆圓尾了）母系歷史記憶與母體孕育這一平行對比的相互交織還是有動人之處的
阿尔莫多瓦大概是到了想怎么拍就怎么拍的阶段了吧，片子的内容太杂了，有堆砌的感觉。他的故事和弗朗哥时期相应的点正是以母亲为焦点的生生死死，借助如今的故事来讲述特定年代的女性史，平行母亲也就是这个意思了。包括孩子抱错了这条主要线索，也是影射Franquismo时期对Republicana的产妇们的真实行为。如果聚焦在这里让二者更为契合，那绝对是个很牛逼的片子。但是在故事的讲述中加入了太多的元素冲散了历史这一点（通过结尾那句话我猜测导演也是想在这里多着墨的）。简单来说，导演一如既往的着眼于女性情绪，然而又想碰沉重的历史话题，结果就是导致片子很断裂。
阿莫多瓦中等水平。揭露真相的那场让我有点出戏。但克鲁兹真好看。其实只要阿莫多瓦还保持着一两年一部的拍片速度就值得高兴了（下一部是凯特布兰切特！
这是一部彻底拍给青少年看的作品，但分级又是R级，好拧巴……其实成长是个残酷的过程，但当下这个更“文明”更“政治正确”的时代里，家长，老师，学校会用更好的方式保护孩子，导致孩子往往会忘了提前学习保护自己并抗争。本片的意图还是明显的，成长过程中的暴力是时时相伴的，所以孩子必须要学会反击。套入了那么多惊悚，通灵等元素只是一种新的杂糅方式而已，有两场戏的视听做得不错，一段声效让杜比厅的座椅都震了好久。原来美国那个时期的青少年斗殴力度，跟我们小时候差不多狠，这个让我很代入。
服化道摄都挺棒，就是故事太一般，有点生拉硬扯。一是将两母亲拽一起，后来还玩女同；二是换错孩子，让人想起《换子疑云》，其中一个孩子生得太搞了；三是把这些跟挖墓弄到一起，似乎是想在生与死之间进行某种思考。
虽然是阿莫多瓦，即便是看调度、看美术陈设都很享受，可实在是个让人提不起兴致的故事，个体和国家的两条线也没有很好的融合，更显狗血。
可惜只愿意打个3星，实在是现实和历史两条线太割裂了。好在缪斯佩内洛普·克鲁兹表现一如既往地好（甚至更加自然？），奇情故事和大历史才能稍微融和一些。女2就明显稚嫩了，只是银短发造型很惊艳，能和大导大牌合作，未来看好。里面一段蕾丝情也是戛然而止，克鲁兹又和男1怀了2胎。这种流动的取向阿莫多瓦都懒得去讲了～可惜只愿意打个3星。实在是现实和历史两条线太割裂了。好在缪斯佩内洛普·克鲁兹表现一如既往地好（甚至更加自然？），奇情故事和大历史才能稍微融和一些。女2就明显稚嫩了，只是银短发造型很惊艳，能和大导大牌合作，未来看好。里面一段蕾丝情也是戛然而止，克鲁兹又和男1怀了2胎。这种流动的取向阿莫多瓦都懒得去讲了～这么多年过去了，克鲁兹美貌保持得太好了
怎么觉得结尾和故事不是一回事啊？前4/5好看。
jump scare比较老套，但是整部电影充满着一种古怪的温暖。完全可以理解为不存在这些幽灵，是男孩的一种自救。小男孩很特别，霍克这配戏都没怎么露全脸
命运抽你脸时，你得用力抽回去，文艺作品都这样，现实是，躺平吧。伊桑霍克好肥
各方面都很敷衍。可以理解西班牙为什么不送奥外
单独看的话，错抱婴儿和内战创伤这两段戏都不算特别出彩，而且两者之间的嫁接也比较生硬和勉强。总之，Almodóvar的个人风格几乎无法辨识，看来这确实不是他擅长的题材啊。
TA们其中一个说：“看看那个老处女”
各方面都很敷衍。可以理解西班牙为什么不送奥外
以为是共时性的平行，结果是历时性的平行，还算别致吧。
我比较吃惊的是发现抱错居然没想到找医院赔偿，毕竟咱中国人这种事也没少听，但这点其实阿莫多瓦处理得不错。
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