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".
私人癖好导致剧作重心略偏，节奏失控，但往后就好了，整体还是喜欢的，而且马戏团的戏虽是剧作上的败笔却在视听层面做的很棒，陀螺的影像与氛围依旧充满独特魅力，可比起之前在魔幻与现实的平衡，陀螺这回似乎更偏向现实主义，没有真正的怪物而是让现实将人摧残成怪物，魔幻骗术的神秘性被完全剥夺，一个底层野心被上流精英玩弄、践踏、毁灭，自以为是却只是个无知的玩具，美国梦终是虚无，下层命运终是循环无尽的悲惨，结尾很黑，但命运悲剧大于人物悲剧，男主塑造的还是差点意思，库珀的气质本身就不太符合角色
没有传说中那么糟糕，故事是圆乎的，就是布兰切特的角色从头到尾不知道动机是啥，就是个来推男主走剧情的——但谁又不是呢。陀螺的美术设计是永远值得欣赏的，不过这一部和科恩当年那个歌谣有一样的缺点：过于精致而玩具化又毫无个人风格可言。至于表演方面，除了布拉德利大男主能公关一下，剩下的大牌其实都没啥发挥空间。
这么个阵容拼凑这么个东西其实，反而冲淡了故事的表现力，150分钟的片长也没什么必要。
片名这么梁羽生，故事这么不奇幻，古怪指数这么低的陀螺，让人不太习惯啊，是奥斯卡让您平庸了吗？。。
7.5/老版演员都不熟悉，看得昏昏沉沉，但本片总体来说算是一部不错的翻拍、改编，比相近题材的《算牌人》好看。可能是台词写得太直白了，让这个“行骗”的故事没有满足观者的好奇心，所以评价很一般。最后的反转很一般，关键一个小时才出场的布兰切特这位最后的赢家戏份太少了，一切焦点都落在库柏这个大男主上，一点也不“黑色”。
三星半。其实整体上还算有模有样，陀螺也很适合这种洞悉人心式的暗黑风格题材。前半段马戏团部分的美术风格也颇具观赏性。就是每次表演之后都自己揭秘，或者先说谜底后表演，这种感觉不那么ok.
前面又吓人又墨迹，都看困了、好在后面进展迅速，结尾处理的前后呼应、故事的不错，就是男主这张脸总让我感觉是在澳洲驰骋的牛仔，下一秒就要骑马了
而结尾也算是还愿了
好工整的电影。what a crazy world
看了演职员表才知道是陀螺的作品www大魔王演的真的是好，前半段确实拖的有点长了，但是单就是黑色电影来讲，150分是有的，甚至比《布鲁克林迷案》还要好
黑暗，致郁，主角的一切上升，都是用带血的利刃抢夺而来，最终必将走向毁灭。貌似原版更好，有时间看看原版。
有点无聊 说起来我最近才知道Rooney mara和纸牌屋的Kate mara是亲姐妹
机关算尽太聪明，反误了卿卿性命。
陀螺何苦又何必翻拍这。前面不到一小时的马戏团部分显然是最好的，各种奇幻蒙太奇轮番亮相，但作为铺垫又是冗长的，两年后的叙事迅速泄气，大魔王也无法救场，而且跟鲁妮玛拉的对手戏就几句话就没了？定位有偏差，想制作一部古典惊悚黑色电影，但显然小题大做，也不适合如今时代（除了美学）。
6.5/10 两位女主全程没互动，这不是纯浪费卡司？
真的，好长，啊！前半部分和后半部分很脱节，最后靠一杯酒圆回来，但还是感觉像两个故事。
结局确定完了吗？？魔兔的呢？？她俩带着钱远走高飞的画面呢？？
最大优点是服化道，是真的给我强烈愉悦感的那种服化道。相较于原作的改动几乎全是赘笔，仿佛是嫌原作不够通俗直白，导演加入战争背景，戳破男主“双赢”谎言，甚至直接加入男主身份背景并让他杀人。精神分析的意图太明显，反而让原作最迷人的暧昧内核和宿命感荡然无存。好在收尾收得比原作干净利索。
I thought this was going to be Guillermo del toro's The Prestige but no
关于怪物的养成和轮换，一切有为法，如梦幻泡影，如露亦如电，应作如是观。
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