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".
“不要再问我‘你还好吗’，我会想办法好起来的。”整部电影都在疗愈人的情感，像是给这个乱象的世界留下一丝劫后余生的希望，会过去的，都会过去的。
從19年之後，鍾+張從〈腿〉開始的創作（以及這部片），題材選擇都在往更大衆的生活層面去經營（事實上陽光普照也是，但那套調度依舊是鍾往常電影的慣用手法），而這部片更像是一個蹭COVID-19熱度改出來的故事。故事更像是電視劇而不是電影。尤其這片前一小時的戲處理得很糟糕，劇情上本不應該笑的，從結果來看就變得很尬很好笑。但很明顯的，這部片跟他過往電影的調度比，那種透過威嚇人物來達到觀衆心理關心的調度手法收斂了很多很多（個人覺得是件好事），雖然似乎也導致整個劇作質量一同下降了。後續的創作類型有待觀察這一趨勢。★☆
即便是大家都吐槽，鸡汤，像电视剧，甚至照搬上一部作品阳光普照。
内核有点类似于《阳光普照》，都是一种破碎家庭关系的修补，疫情的背景套的略生硬，在前半部分有点刻意借此装神弄鬼，好在人物塑造上没有太掉链子，母女线写的还蛮好看的，尤其是贾静雯的母亲一角，失业失意的精神疾病状态表演的很到位，王净也非常让人惊艳。片名为《瀑布》，这个意向从头至尾没有出现过，但个人感觉描述的就是母亲这个角色前后生活状态的落差感，如瀑布的流水。结尾的设计很巧妙，流水冲走女儿代表一种情绪的宣泄，也是一种生活的无常，钟孟宏这次摄影中的蓝色调用的也不错，构建出了贾静雯角色的虚幻的精神世界，而当蓝布撤掉，阳光重新照进来，也意味着一种新生，这也是我看钟孟宏电影一直以来的一种感觉:无论生活如何捉弄你，但总有希望在心头。（8/10）
母亲沉重的心结，仿佛湍流的瀑布，在耳边嗡嗡作响，无力摆脱；
钟孟宏这是要搞“家庭三部曲”的节奏了。《阳光普照》从父子关系出发，用最耀眼的色调剖开救赎背后的血腥真相，看似美满的家庭早已支离破碎、阴暗不堪。《瀑布》则从母女关系着眼，透析个体到家庭再到社会氛围的全方位坠落：职场精英沦落为精神病患；和谐家庭从幸福走向瓦解，母女关系开始颠倒，父亲用谎言维持虚妄的体面；社会机构趋于封闭，人与人愈发疏离。但相比于前作，钟孟宏变得温柔多了。蓝色帷幕象征口罩，它总有被揭开的那一天。世界终将痊愈，阳光普照大地。
大概想再拍一部《阳光普照》那样的片子，但这《瀑布》强烈的鸡汤感比起上一部“阴影”的叙述实在差太远，要不是配乐不错实在听不下这堆破台词，陈以文说“出来工作，最重要的就是”时我脑海里已经替他接出“把握时间，掌握方向”了。
威尼斯地平线单元，期望越大失望越大，越到后面我越无法理解这个剧本。至今为止我都没有看到过关于疫情的优秀艺术作品，这部也不例外。现在我急需一剂猛药才能让我熬过这届威尼斯的低潮期。
7.6 熟悉的扎眼摄影，熟悉的林生祥式配乐，熟悉的特写机位，熟悉的元素过多，熟悉的割裂感觉。后半段变喜剧片，因为叽歪被打不讹人高踢腿的大爷，陈以文从之前的驾校过来骂人“不会倒车吗”，洪尚秀都写不出的“卖场之花”……钟孟宏单场戏不是写不精彩，但是凑一起总是怪别扭的。
摄影打光越好显得故事越尴尬，相比之下《秘密访客》都能及格了。魏如萱的台词太烂了，再加上本身就做作的对白，难受到让人翻白眼。/以及为什么所有人都要戴四千年美女的大口罩？褶皱都不扯开的口罩，和疫情背景一样无效。
钟孟宏真的很戳我的点！看完莫名有种emo+感动的感觉。大家都演得很好，也很有感触。当蓝色大口罩摘下，阳光进来。就如同最近久久阴雨刺骨的天气，搭配刚刚出现的阳光。虽然只是微光，但终会阳光普照。
母亲走出了抑郁，have a nice day；
剧本还是很有意思的，一开始的母女是以惯常见的关系出现，母亲仿佛是个利索的白领，女儿青春叛逆期，两人的关系在隔离前更像隔离期，隔着房间说话，不愿意交流等等。等到病情到来，两人却开始扭转。母亲变得任性不可控，女儿却一夜之间变成大人，那把火烧的是母亲对于所谓家的失望，而大火之后果然能重生。思觉失调不过是轻微精神病的另一种好听的说法。而民间把这叫做中邪。看到不存在的人，听到不存在的声音。勉强维持的生活因为一场隔离终于被撕破。最后终于愿意卖掉房子其实就是看清了现实。终于直面了婚姻的失败，母亲也开始找到瀑布的来源。她前面一直没有哭过。哪怕是她生病时面对前夫，那时的她更像是在诱惑前夫回头，直到最后，心中的瀑布经由女儿的变故化作眼泪流了出来。很奇妙的隐喻。
有几个桥段很有意思。但总体我还是很不喜欢钟孟宏，感觉他的作品漂浮在人生真谛和狗血八点档之间，漂浮在煽情做作和朴素动人之间，整个让我非常不适。
不要再问我好不好，我会想办法好起来，好好地跟你一起走下去。
水溢煮锅，水漫溪河，瀑布声萦绕耳畔，蓝色帷帐遮住光线。开头的城市景观和直射在写字楼玻璃上的光像是看《阳光普照》，相依为命的母女二人，家道中徂，一些不必要的隐喻堆砌，也有一些鸡汤意味，但也足够动人，可能全靠贾静雯的演技撑起来。【Netflix】
对“为什么是我？”最好的回答是“我们一起好好把日子过下去”
私认为比阳光普照好，有快进的段落，比如精神病院，有细细看的地方，挺多，中介、卖房、熊猫、关于丈夫早就出轨有了孩子，贾静雯一直都知道，几位演员都不会出戏，尤其是贾静雯，卖场之花，几幅画挑的切题
话说“看电影”大多时候仍是一件私人审美的事啊——看过这么多电影到现在，已经少有哪部新片从开头第一个画面或者第一个音符，就把情绪瞬间拉进去了——可能有的电影其实也没那么好，却贵在真诚——编剧怀着对文字的敬畏用心写下故事，导演怀着对艺术的敬畏尽善尽美调度，而演员怀着对观众的敬畏力求与角色灵魂互换般诠释——被这样精心呵护而长成的电影，既有生动的血肉又有挺拔的内涵，它不惧时光流逝，即使经年之后，依然足以慰藉所有与之邂逅并共情的人。
女主的精神病人角色设定有种走“得奖捷径”的感觉，反而是王净的女儿角色，人物弧光和成长都更完满。
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