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".
喜欢对女性间那种涓涓细流般的绵密情感有着细语般的 刻画，喜欢母女间温柔、明媚又直率的爱。非常细腻之余却没有刻意为之的矫揉。时间线被设定在于此刻相似却有距离的地方。没有那种必须为此刻宏大的历史记录点滴的逼切愿望，这些是可爱的部分。小女孩没有杂念，演得很好。
2021年度最佳华语片。比期待中还要好。节奏平稳，没有故意煽情。最后半小时开始哭到不行。东亚家庭的孩子都会有的共鸣。导演真的很棒，在生死议题的大框架下，有文化的碰撞，有文化的对立，有家庭里成人与小孩的无法沟通。从任性的不给妹妹妈妈开门，到结尾的主动打开门。用了一整个影片的时间来告诉我们在东亚文化里，爱，是如何被表达的。导演将自己要表达的点，融合得非常好，每一个节奏的交替都是那么的平稳自然。有时候爱真的就是一体两面的东西。爸爸在最后，蹲在楼梯间里哭泣的戏份，让人内心被狠狠戳中，一个父亲的眼泪，一个怕失去妻子的丈夫的眼泪，是那么的难能可贵。的确有时候有的时候我们总觉得父母不能做的更好，可有没有想过，这已经是她们能给我们最好的了。最后，她明白了家的概念，也明白了原来，爱是那么的无声
莉莉跟小女儿烧纸钱那场戏特别喜欢。明明小女儿说今后不烧纸钱外公外婆很可怜，莉莉想到的是将来的自己，一种未来的侥幸。
林嘉欣真是太可惜了，一代港星女神里少有演技好的，却错过了整个黄金时代。
林嘉欣这次演出了不一样的感觉，有张静初的味道了。
很棒，真的在某個侷限的地方中完成的很好的作品。每個部門都交出非常漂亮的成績單。觸動少女成長的幾個瞬間固然動人，可是最後卻似是未完成一個結尾，問題可能出在她沒分清楚是講家庭還是講少女成長（當然理解是都想要講，但問題是真正最核心的是哪一個）。by the way 三個主演都極好，但最令我深刻還是林嘉欣，去醫院坐著被護士弄化療那一顆鏡頭，不過分演繹而是給出了真正的靈光，就是影后級別的演出。
给五分主要是个人经历类似。成绩差，在学校被体罚，到陌生的国度无法融入，如定时炸弹般的家人，难以面对的现实。
美国再好，患病后还是选择回国，刻在骨子里的基因是很难改变的。
03非典那年我九岁，小学三年级，学校突然通知不用上课，我高兴到站在课桌上面蹦，被老师呵斥。电影真细腻，林嘉欣真好，03年真好。
其实是父母早逝，只身携带双女在美国的女强人，片子却聚焦她无奈病回台湾在家庭里的无助，大女儿只会反问“为啥妈妈这么软弱”。 青春的叛逆姐姐，懂事互补的妹妹，面对死亡阴影夫妻不同的态度，都无比真实且细腻。喜欢结尾，母亲跟父亲的两场哭戏之后，家庭也走向和解，留白空镜头。
精心设计的剧本，从细到大处处皆冲突和困境。但感觉女孩对文化和自身身份的认同的展现太过执着，反而忽略了女孩与家庭间关系的更丰富的变化，一直感觉在围着一个问题争吵。而母亲的形象刻画得略表面，希望看到更丰富，反而着墨不多的父亲比较出彩，当然也可能因为他不是那个比较沉的角色更容易有张力。幸好母亲的弱倒是被林嘉欣的美忽略了。感觉不够喉。
文化冲突、世代冲突都显得很浮于表面 上一个疫情时代刚好呼应了当下的氛围 算是唯一的亮点 一切都好平淡好平淡 这么来看瀑布真的好优秀 还的是钟孟宏
琐碎的生活对话和冲突没有表现人物更深层的心理变化，对社会问题探讨也是浅尝辄止，这点不如《瀑布》，少女恋马的情节和《鱼缸》里很像，p.s.林嘉欣还是好好看哎
壳子不错，内容没有填的很深刻，起码是没有让人心头一震或者深深回味的部分。戏剧冲突有了，戏剧冲突没有体现出来。只能说在我这很一般。
看到一半才认出来女主是我的前女神林嘉欣。文化冲突背景下的亲子关系、亲密关系。冲突到和解的过程。
同样是侧重于母女关系和家庭关系，这部的真实自然程度远超瀑布，几个压抑和爆发的点都很有代入感，美中不足是结尾戛然而止，我以为会落在母亲听女儿的演讲那里可惜后面就没交代了
美國女孩跟瀑布在2021年對幹真是偶然與想像的第四章。
是没有很好啦 但寂寞自以为无人理解独自面对所有垂死挣扎的青春期 就还蛮 让人无奈的。
青春期遇上更年期，美国开放自由文化碰撞中国古板教条文化，还有同样对死亡的恐惧。马应该隐喻自由。
有中美文化的冲突，有中年男女的困境，有青春期的叛逆，更有疫情中的骨肉亲情。
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