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".
这才是正能量啊！如果没有真实的苦难，怎么会有理想的光辉。简直是印度版的捕蛇者说，仅是看电影中的暴力镜头就已经很让人感到不适了，但谁又知道现实存有的暴力会残酷多少倍，而那些棍棒是真实打在人身上的。电影很规整，不同段落的法庭戏的打光蛮有意思的。
中国也有，别装理中客了，摸摸良心吧，总有一天你们会需要的，铁拳之下众生都是刍狗。
整部作品在精神气质上没有迂腐的匠气，而是充满热忱与新颖，挖掘出道地的岭南风情和民间生活的趣味，提炼舞狮的精髓，而且处处充满现实主义的人文关怀。剧作/人物成长更得了周星驰电影的道，舞狮是皮，喜剧是形，励志是魂，对传统文化实现了创造性转化。虽是动画，却是用电影视听完成叙事，行云流水、挥洒自如，甚至不似看动画，每个细节都很精心——小到落叶、水滴落下的弧度与速度，动作与音乐的强弱协奏，大到城市/乡村和人物情感的距离。天台独舞和最后的踩桩采青更是壮观的。角色发展在意料之中，离乡飘零和重披战衣，随上山下山的舞狮哲学所交融。文化根源随人物气节而重生，未曾“睡着”。
印象最深的就是“难道要我告诉我的孩子，我们有钱活着，是打死他爸爸的人施舍的吗”
梅花桩上有虚设的高台，房间里有膨胀的大象，我爸没有医保，我友内卷到爆，少年们，我们该跳起来吗？
官媒讲政治正确讲过头了，养蛊了吧，这么好的电影都被黑造型……
～～～～～～～
这么棒的电影，你说人家眼睛小，你他妈的有人性吗？
这个对小人物确实很重要，就像尹天仇最后公演成功，但仅仅也是在“街坊剧场”而已。
连音乐也不放过，把《功夫》和《成吉思汗》稍微改改就变成自己原声了吗？《世间始终你好》《十年埋伏》换个版本用。
那些游离在现实主义边缘，在农村这个原始空间最为“显灵”的、人们所迷信的似有似无的神性力量，其实和少年在广州舞狮时，他背后那片随着冉冉升起的太阳而开始一天运作的城市，无非是同一物。少年从农村到城市一直都生活在这巨大而无形的系统/规则中。也因此，这种因为商业动画电影戏剧性所需要的奇迹并没有让（国产动画难得看到的）现实主义在最后变成好莱坞式的廉价浪漫，而且比当下国产动画所流行的“我命不由天”叙事更进一步的是，即便巨大而无形的力量可能有时候会化为奇迹，但更多是在创造奇迹后，奇迹并没有让生活的庸繁苦闷迎刃而解，只是在人生中仅此一瞬降临的神圣，改变的只有是继续生活在系统中作为个体的人。
配乐：还ok，有地域特色
意义在电影之外，电影层面真是鸡汤鸡血轮流地灌啊。。
但是剧组的发言和态度让我极度反感，做错了就要认，而不是用不知哪儿来的优越感来颠倒是非，艺术没有国界，但是艺术家有。
电影题材选的很好，全景以及一些镜头画面语言也都表现得不错，但歌声与人物的哭嚎总给我一种分裂感，无法深入其中。
故事本身不错，但电影的节奏，情节转换实在是有问题。
确实电影节奏一般，重要的是题材。看到最后部分，心潮澎湃。“我可能会输，但不会放弃抗争”，令人动容。
电影拍摄的很刻意 但我理解这种他们的愤怒
为啥少一颗星呢，紧张程度还是少一些。全靠剧情支撑。印度黑暗，一点点再改变，希望我们也是。
摘下，就回到生活本身。
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