Cape Fear

“If you’re going to remake a Scorsese-De Niro classic, then 1991’s Cape Fear, in which a released murderer terrorises the family of the lawyer who put him away, is perhaps the fairest game. Its source is a 1957 novel, that was followed by a Robert Mitchum film in 1962. And now Apple TV has a crack at the intellectual property. This new set of scripts attempts plenty that’s fresh, enfolding many a reference to online anxieties. The big update is that Max Cady (Javier Bardem), while still tormenting the Bowden family, no longer has it in for one lawyer, but two. Anna Bowden (Amy Adams), who defended him, is married to Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson), who prosecuted him. This introduces extra insinuations to explore, and boy does the plot go for it with the insatiable rapacity of a telenovela.”
Jasper Rees, Telegraph

“Long-term Cape Fear fans will certainly enjoy the knowing nods to the 1991 movie, such as when a character cackles dementedly in a cinema or when Aretha Franklin’s Do Right Woman, Do Right Man drifts in (a more audacious link feels a call-back too far). And like that film, all of this unfolds like a kind of heatwave fever dream, the cicadas buzzing incessantly, oblivious bystanders to the mad psychodrama unfolding around them. It’s gripping late-night summer viewing.”
James Jackson, The Times

“It is, to be sure, a masterclass in tension, in taking things right to the edge of credulity but never over and it never forgets the power of the jump scare. Dear God, does it never forget the power of the jump scare. The new Cape Fear also manages to work in, in superbly seamless fashion, just about every hot button issue the modern age offers. The plot uses the possibilities offered by AI, by the phenomenon of catfishing, of cancel culture, of online rumours, by our deepening mistrust in all the systems we once thought would protect us, our growing distance from reality itself and what happens when our last remaining redoubt – the sanctity and safety of the family unit – is threatened. If you don’t need your own microdosing habit by the third episode, you are Max Cady and I am running far, far away.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian