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".
电影值得一生热爱，电影人值得尊敬。
《倒数时刻》是林-曼努尔·米兰达当导演处女作，《电影之神》是已年纪90的山田洋次拍的第n部电影，这一新一老似乎都在向观众讲述一件事：你有才华，但你也不得不坚持。你有才华，也得相信自己有才华。
致敬松竹一百年，只选一部电影的话，山田洋次选了东京物语
4新冠疫情下的电影院困境，也还是第一次在电影里看到如此直给的呼吁，90岁的电影之神山田洋次对电影的拳拳之心天地可鉴。
无论喜欢与否，一位89岁高龄拍了一辈子电影的导演，他有独属于他自己的艺术见解和创作执念，他并不需要创作一个无瑕疵的人物，这世界也不存在“完美”的电影，哪怕这片子叫电影之神。
关于人生，不是选择一条不会后悔的前路，而是在避无可避的后悔中权衡。所有关于时间的叙述都无比动人，当夕阳的余晖变成黑白的影像，当苍老的脸庞映照年轻的模样，当禁锢的银幕化作越过时间的桥梁，我们会明白所谓的后悔也会成为调剂，在苦乐参半的人生况味里品尝。如同电影，它从来不会拯救人生的无常，但在每一次苦难的时刻我们需要电影，来舒缓、疗愈我们的哀伤。
我能活这么久多亏有你，这是献给你的勋章，为了你选择的爱情，为了我选择的你。
3.5/5
电影中，孙子给“银幕电影院”设计主页；电影外，影片官网主页就是电影里那个。
愿能从现实走到荧幕里。。
#BJIFF05# 除了满溢的迷影线，其他的部分都有些老套
不管是剧情所表现的爱情和亲情也好，主人公对于电影的热爱方式也好，都共情不起来，即使是老爷子拍的也要打下两星了
我对任何关于创作过程的电影都兴趣十足，本片对电影的热爱是浓烈的，其他的嘛，一般般，框架不错，部分色调很舒服，整体略仓促，导致节奏和结构不太行。宫本信子仍有伊丹十三电影中的熟悉感。
单从平平淡淡讲个故事来说，我还是挺喜欢的。
这是山田先生对电影黄金年代的深情回望，也是疫情期间给爱电影人的抚慰剂，却也可能是山田先生作品序列中最弱的一部，影片拍摄的波折与幕后的情谊（志村健去世，泽田研二补上）、表达的主题都非常感人，但故事和人物实在不完善，菅田将晖也没演出年轻主角的“无赖”，导致角色有割裂感，最关键的是片中片《电影之神》的创意在伍迪艾伦《开罗紫玫瑰》中已经完美地演绎过一次了。
以为会是迷影之神作，结果却像“作神”之影迷。2.5
松竹百年就拍了个这？男人的迷影情结为啥总要老婆来承受你的中二自私？一句“你幸福，她就一定幸福”奠定了这部电影东亚直男普信电影的基调。
除了菅田将晖以外的所有主演都很棒，年轻与年长两位女主更是入戏惊人。
纪念性质选大于电影本身，故事有点拉胯，无法撑起人物的情感，最终只能得到“渣男”一枚。
山田洋次（现在要尊称一声老爷子）电影包含一种有温度的专属黄颜色
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