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“Ever look around and wonder if we deserve all this?” a woman asks, standing by their sprawling mansion’s swimming pool with her handsome, ripped, fellow lawyer husband.
“No,” he replies.
Ah me. Ah my. Welcome to the latest screen incarnation of John D MacDonald’s taut psychological thriller, published in 1957 as The Executioners and now adapted for the third time under the title Cape Fear. Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck starred in the first, in 1962 – the former as the villain Max Cady, nursing an incandescent rage and obsessive desire for vengeance against the latter, as lawyer Sam Bowden, for successfully prosecuting him for rape. Martin Scorsese directed a remake that had Nick Nolte as Bowden and a truly terrifying Robert De Niro as Cady in 1991. It introduced a few more moral grey areas but the battle remained between good and very, very evil as Cady sought to destroy Bowden’s life and family in every conceivable way.
But we have all got a lot more complex since then and here to match our new sophistications and probe every single modern weakness, fear and pressure point is Nick Antosca’s 10-part series of the same name. It is a wild ride. The new Cape Fear stars Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson as lawyers Anna and Tom Bowden and Javier Bardem having the absolute time of his life as Max Cady. Bardem turns in what will surely become the definitive take on the role; genuinely charming, convincing, momentarily even sympathetic and then terrifying, in a way that makes De Niro look like Danny DeVito but somehow never quite becomes pantomimic or preposterous.
This Cady was jailed for life for killing his wife after his lawyer Anna advised him to plead guilty in the hope of getting a lighter sentence. The gambit didn’t work. Afterwards, Anna got married to Cady’s prosecutor – Tom. In the intervening 17 years, Cady has had plenty of time to think about this and their claims that the relationship didn’t begin until after the trial and he is not happy.
He is, however, now free – exonerated by new evidence that has come to light. Anna remains convinced that he is guilty. Whether she is so convinced that she – or she and Tom? – did something to ensure he was convicted becomes the question. Their coded conversations – one overheard by their daughter Natalie (Lily Collias), with whom Anna was pregnant during the trial (which will become, like every other tiny detail, an awful part of the intricate web of horrors woven with unflagging glee by its creator over the increasingly dread-filled hours) – suggest much darker secrets in the mix (Tom’s microdosing habit likely a mere bagatelle) than anyone knows.
Meanwhile, the destruction of the Bowdens begins. Gently, at first – a family of skunks drowned in the pool, shots of their cat wandering around looking increasingly vulnerable, the intruder alarms going off at all hours of the night – but soon the stakes are raised. The Bowdens’ son Danny (Ryan Anthony Holcomb) proves as vulnerable as the cat looks. Anna’s previous charity client and his mother are found dead. Natalie becomes best friends and more with a girl she meets at a party whose ability to terrify her own mother to tears makes you wonder just how many twists and turns this new version can support … And there’s more, much more, including a fine extension to the tradition of using actors from earlier versions in unexpected ways, much as it uses iconic scenes from 1962 and 1991 in ways that add to the growing feeling of disorientation and sense that anything could happen – usually right before it does.
The direction is immaculate, and Antosca has been vocal with praise and gratitude for Scorsese’s contribution (an executive producer, along with Steven Spielberg) to the process and execution of the story as a whole.
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.
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Cape Fear is on Apple TV on 5 June
