‘Cape Fear’ review: psych-thriller reimagining sticks closer to book than Scorsese’s classic

Can Javier Bardem and Amy Adams stay afloat amid the choppy seas of fan expectation?

T he first episode of this 10-part remake (of a remake) opens with a picture perfect Fourth Of July, as a family celebrates with a barbecue and pool party. Lawyer mum Anna ( Amy Adams ) is chatting commandingly on her phone about a case while chino-wearing husband Tom (Patrick Wilson) is dutifully rustling something up on the grill for their two teenage kids Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack (Joe Anders). And yet there’s tension behind the Norman Rockwell-isms. Tom is attempting to self-medicate in one of the spare rooms and Zack has self-harming tendencies. The two have the kind of spiky father-son relationship that feels like it could boil over at any moment.

When Anna’s former client, Max Cady ( Javier Bardem ) – who brutally murdered his pregnant wife – is released from prison in an apparent wrongful conviction, their perfect life begins to unravel. Especially when it’s revealed that Cady’s prosecuting lawyer is someone close to home.

Director Morten Tyldum spends most of the first episode slowly building up the sense of unease that’s gripping the family when we know Max is free. Strange things begin appearing in the pool, a digital frame of adorable Bowden clan photos starts glitching and a piercing burglar alarm keeps going off.

After many expository scenes, Max finally turns up, dressed in a crisp Man From Del Monte suit along with a Dr Evil laugh. He inserts himself into the pinched, forced smiles of Southern hospitality with Bardem playing the former convict less like a boogeyman and more like a charming narcissist. It’s a risky move. The spectre of Robert De Niro ‘s performance in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 version, all black-eyed machismo and Henry Rollins tattoos, still looms large. It’s also Bardem playing against type. The cinematic psychopaths he has played ( No Country For Old Men ‘s Anton Chigurh and Skyfall ‘s Raoul Silva) are forever etched in cinemagoers brains.

While initially jarring, this very modern, elusive reading of Cady and its slow reveal works over the 10 episode run. Meanwhile Amy Adams is reliably dazzling. The baked Southern setting nods to her role in Sharp Objects , while she plays Anna like a woman who is used to holding 500 versions of herself together at one time, recalling the range she showed in the under-appreciated Nightbitch . She can articulate a whole universe of moods with one look, from steely or vulnerable to politely-swallowing-her-anger and then back again.

This take on Cape Fear sticks closely to the source material (John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel The Executioners ) but the melodramatic orchestral swells that underscore the more emotional moments strike a strange note. It’s also impossible not to compare Collias’ level-headed Natalie to the more eccentric version of the character Juliette Lewis played in the 1991 film. Still, Cape Fear 2026 is a simmering, star-filled, slow burn – a watchable addition to the ‘Rich People Being Awful’ canon.

The first two episodes of ‘Cape Fear’ are available on Apple TV from June 5, with new episodes released weekly