The new “Cape Fear” is a seven-week ride
Published 15.24
TV REVIEW You’d think we didn’t need a third version of ‘Cape Fear’, but apparently we did.
Drop everything and buckle up, because when Javier Bardem plays Max Cady, it’s going to be a blast.
Cape Fear
Apple TV Plus
Part 1-8
By Nick Antosca, with Javier BardemAmy Adams, Patrick Wilson, Lily Collias, Joe Anders, CCH Pounder, Jamie Hector, Malia Pyles.
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER. John D MacDonald’s book “The executioners” (in Swedish: “Illdåd planras”) has already been filmed twice as “Cape Fear”.
First in 1962, with Robert Mitchum as the antagonist Max Cady, and co Gregory Peck as lawyer Sam Bowden, whom Cady returns to terrorize after a long prison sentence.
And since 1991, with Robert De Niro like Cady and Nick Nolte like Bowden.
Did we even need a TV series?
Absolutely, I want to firmly assert after seeing Apple’s gorgeous variant. A slightly deranged and deliciously kitschy, violent fever dream from a sweaty and Southern Gothic North Carolina, created by Nick Antosca and executive produced by the heavyweights Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese (who directed the 90s film).
Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson play wealthy Anna and Tom Bowden, who are both lawyers and were involved in different ways in the trial against Max Cady, during which they also became a couple. And Javier Bardem plays Cady, who has spent 17 years behind bars for the murder of his wife, but now gets out after new evidence comes to light, and has a huge horn in his side for the Bowdens.
Bardem, who has previously excelled as a villain in “No country for old men” and the Bond film “Skyfall”, is incredible, Oscar-level good, as Cady, who here oscillates between madness and charm in a way that makes him difficult to grasp. Both for the Bowden family, whose two teenage children (Lily Collias and Joe Anders) he uses as a tool to get to Anna and Tom, and to us who watch.
There is also an ambivalence about the Bowden couple, who are not as happy as one might think at first glance. And while the dramatic music, the intro, and really the entire score feel delightfully retro (and a familiar figure from 1991 makes a cameo appearance), modern technology is woven into Cady’s terror in a way that places the series firmly in the present.
Ten episodes (I’ve seen eight) may be a bit too many. Much stretches the limits of credibility and people do not always behave completely logically. But you have to take that when a series is as devilishly entertaining as 2026’s “Cape Fear”.
It’s a seven-week ride, a perfect summer thriller, and the year’s strongest four so far in my rating book.
“Cape Fear” premieres on Apple TV Plus on June 5.
