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".
面对莎士比亚《麦克白》这样的作品我总觉得已经穷尽了想象力和期待，不过科恩对比利·怀尔德等所属的黑白片时代的痴迷仍然让这部《麦克白》多了些记忆点，成功为一部低成本影片营造了邪恶的氛围和一些气势。影帝影后演技没的说，女巫的肢体语言也太棒了吧，强烈要求加戏！
梦游的哀嚎
当早期德国表现主义风格默片开始讲话，并且讲出的都是原装的莎士比亚台词。
字面意义的好看，但内容和形式存在一种割裂感。"I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly."
莎翁的《麦克白》改编版本甚多，从话剧到歌剧再到电影，甚至背景移植到不同文化的版本，让人目不暇接。科恩的这个版本，以黑白十六毫米影片，用极简主义的布景设置，完全采用莎翁诗一般的语言对白，来呈现这一诗剧。科恩甚至让丹泽尔·华盛顿来演麦克白，让他的改编更具颠覆性。可惜，科恩的想法很有新意，但呈现出来的效果并不佳，影片沉闷无趣。华盛顿是个好演员，在此剧中演技根本没有展现的空间。他缺乏话剧台词功底，莎翁的诗意独白，让他咕咕哝哝快速说出，完全没有诗剧味了。
当不了坏人，就别当坏人了。Things we do have consequences. Our body remembers. For everything, there’s always a sign.
三星半，在2021年的片子里看到这么表现主义的置景还挺惊喜的，构图及镜头调度也都是极简的阴森和神秘，舞台感十足的同时也不乏电影艺术。与之不太相称的是表演吧，特别是两位主演，撇开肤色和口音不谈，我个人感觉华盛顿和弗朗西斯肢体和台词都通俗感太强，特别是很多靠着两人独白起范儿的段落都觉得劲道不够。
没什么意外的剧情，甚至感觉是各种MV在拼凑，但因为佛罗里达的各种缤纷色彩变得没那么难以接受，谁看了这么美的戳爷还不满足啊!!!!!全程基本就对着屏幕流口水（不是），我是导演我也着他脸一直拍close shot，oh不当然还会拍下全身的意思。
每一帧都很美，戳爷好好看，没错 还是朋友最靠谱！
我为了弟弟和喵喵学长点开，看到最后他们都没见面？？？？？编剧，现在不流行错过，谢谢。
表现主义的主观现实弥散着荒诞离奇，极简主义的黑白布景充斥着焦躁不安，形式主义的运镜构图回荡着古典情怀的啼鸣——优美，但没劲。电影已然前行了一个世纪，难道还离不开戏剧的影子吗。
影片的摄影美术带来的肃杀仪式感完美匹配莎士比亚百转千回的台词，看似没有新东西，完成度鲜有匹敌，去年最精彩的英语片之一。这就看出编导和演员的实力了，虽然演员分别操着美白、美黑、英格兰、爱尔兰等口音，情绪水乳交融，组合在一起毫无违和感，所以《驾驶我的车》戏中戏看着难受和大家操不同语言关系不大，纯粹就是演得烂，不管这是不是编导刻意的安排。Carter Burwell生涯最佳音乐之一，魔音绕梁。
8/10。有好多时候我以为我在看舞台剧。摄影很棒，开头的白屏和结尾的黑幕绝了。喜欢这种冷峻氤氲的氛围。只是大段像诗的台词要思索，看得我脑壳疼。
我说泰国人别太会摸鱼，ppt凑个片是吧，支线剧搞快点。
我总恍惚觉得这是一次对黑泽明奇妙的告白。另外全片我最喜欢的部分都是三女巫的戏份。
Troye是真好看啊！
乔尔想要模仿伯格曼或黑泽明的风格，可无奈他是科恩兄弟的成员，《麦克白的悲剧》的风格是分裂的，一方面是基里科，德国表现主义影响之下的美术设定，另一方面乔尔则重复着同一种构图：浅焦下人物近景直面观众，强迫其注意到人物说话时的肌肉运动，一种典型的黑色幽默处理方式，人物的美式英语则仿佛置身于一场排练或Zoom上的剧本朗读会议，我们当然可以设想一种科恩式的麦克白，参考《逃狱三王》或《巴斯特民谣》，抛弃掉严肃性，在形而上学和反类型上越走越远，用丑角视角或者将场景移置某种荒诞派色彩的人物窘境之中，不过很可惜的是《悲剧》并没有，属于好莱坞那种作为呆板无趣，却稳赚不赔的，缝合怪式的改编；或许将同样的题材交给多兰，也会得到一部类似的影片。
当不了坏人，就别当坏人了。Things we do have consequences. Our body remembers. For everything, there’s always a sign.
天真以为是现代版改编但不是…..再一次看莎剧文言文麦克白😨。各种布景建筑光影营造的氛围感一流，但除了女巫和Ross，其他演员都肉眼可见地努力又违和。在一群莎剧腔里冒出一个美式口语腔小朋友我笑出来了…
3 stars for the friendship
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