Crew
Directors – (1) Morten Tyldum, (2) S.J. Clarkson, (3&9) Amanda Marsalis, (4) Reed Morano, (5) Steven Piet, (6) Trey Edward Shults, (7) Jon S. Baird, (8) Stephen Williams & (10) Jonathan Van Tulleken, Teleplays – (1) Nick Antosca, (2&7) Andre Jacquemetton & Maria Jacquemetton, (3&8) Alan Page Arriaga, (4) Tara Shivkumar, (5) Peter Blake, (6) Brian Evenson, (9) Peter Blake & Diana Pawell & (10) Nick Antosca, Peter Blake & Tara Shivkumar, Story (7) – Greg Goetz, Andre Jacquemetton & Maria Jacquemetton, Created for TV by Nick Antosca, Based on the Films Cape Fear (1962) Written by James R. Webb & Cape Fear (1991) Written by Wesley Strick & the Novel The Executioners (1957) by John D. McDonald, Producers – Brette Billow, David Kirchner & Greg O’Bryant, Photography – (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) Eben Bolter & (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) Celiana Cardenas, Music – Jeff Russo, Based on Themes by Elmer Bernstein & Bernard Herrmann, Visual Effects Supervisor – Brian Kubovcik, Special Effects Supervisor – Wayne Rowe, Production Design – Jamie Walker McCall. Production Company – Universal Content Productions/Skelia Productions/Amblin Television/Eat the Cat.
Cast
Amy Adams (Anna Bowden), Javier Bardem (Max Cady), Patrick Wilson (Tom Bowden), Lily Collias (Natalie Bowden), Joe Anders (Zach Bowden), Malia Pyles (Neveah Valentine), Juliette Lewis (Crystal Cady), C.C.H. Pounder (Noa Toussaint), Margarita Levieva (Lexi), Ron Perlman (Robert Cady), Jamie Hector (Ray Rawlins), Paul Schneider (Detective Grayson Park), Anna Baryshnikov (Tabitha), Ted Levine (Brandon Devereaux), Max Mattern (Luke Cady), Ethan Embry (Ollie), Matha Millen (Trish Valentine), Patrick Fischler (Dr Lee), Eric Mendenhall (Louis Pilgrim)
Plot
In Savannah, Georgia, husband and wife Anna and Tom Bowden work as lawyers specialising in getting unjustly convicted prisoners freed. They are startled with the news that Max Cady, who spent seventeen years in jail for killing his wife, has just been freed after another woman shot herself after confessing that she was the one who murdered Cady’s wife. Anna and Tom met when she was Cady’s defence lawyer and Tom was the prosecutor and afterwards married. Following Cady’s release, the family undergoes a series of assaults. Their son Zach is drugged and his toe cut off. It appears that Zach was being lured by a woman online. Now their teenage daughter Natalie is seduced by Neveah Valentine, the same girl who lured Zach, who Anna discovers is Cady’s daughter. Cady then buys the house opposite them. Every aspect of their lives is turned over or surveilled by Max to make it appear they are abusive, violent or vengeful and to have them disbarred or arrested. Max even begins to sow doubts with Zach and Natalie that Tom and Anna are not their real parents and that he is.
Cape Fear (1962) is a classic of neo-noir, featuring family man Gregory Peck trying to fend off Robert Mitchum, who has never been better in a performance, as ex-con Max Cady, who is determined to take revenge for Peck’s part in jailing him. It’s an electrifying work. It underwent a lesser but still well worthwhile remake as Cape Fear (1991) from Martin Scorsese with Nick Nolte as the lawyer and Robert De Niro as Max Cady. Both films are based on the novel The Executioners (1957) by crime writer John D. McDonald, best known for the Travis McGee novels.
As with a number of 1980s/90s thrillers in recent years – Hannibal (2013-5), Fatal Attraction (2023), Dead Ringers (2023) – Cape Fear has been rebooted for tv as a TV Mini-Series of ten episodes. Martin Scorsese, director of the 1991 version, and its executive producer Steven Spielberg have both signed on, while Juliette Lewis who played the teenage daughter in the 1991 film now plays Cady’s sister (she was eighteen at the time of the original but here emerges at age 53, looking on the wrong site of the Hollywood party scene). The score has also reworked themes from the 1962 film.
Both of the original Cape Fear films are a model of economy. In these, Cady is released from jail and comes to take revenge against the lawyer who put him away. Both films then progress around assorted set-pieces of malicious revenge where Cady targets the lawyer’s family, staying within the system to maintain plausible denial while gaslighting and making life hell for Bowden, culminating in a fight to the death in a houseboat on Cape Fear River.
The big question is how the conceivable heck are you going to sustain Cady’s malicious games and gaslighting for a series of ten one-hour episodes without it getting tediously extruded? The 1962 film ran for 106 minutes, the 1991 for two hours and eight minutes. At ten episodes of 55 minutes, the Cape Fear mini-series extrudes that for nearly 4-5 times the length.
Perhaps the most noticeable change is to make this into a 2020s Girl Power work and headline Amy Adams in the role of the lawyer. (Patrick Wilson is cast as the husband who is also a lawyer but his is a supporting role). Both of the other versions of the film played on the primal instinct of a man defending his home and family. In fact, here, the whole Cape Fear aspect of the title is no longer of much relevance – the houseboat gets set on fire in the last episode, while the main confrontation takes place with Cady invading the Bowden home.
The other big change is the lawyer’s complicity. In the 1962 film, Gregory Peck gave evidence against his client; in the 1991 film, Nick Nolte hid evidence to allow a guilty man to go to jail until the illiterate Cady learned to read and it was overturned. Here rather absurdly both Cady’s prosecution and defence lawyers get married following the trial. There is no hiding of evidence but Amy Adams hides a dirty secret that she slept with Cady and that her teenage daughter might be Cady’s. There is the odd scene that survives from the 1991 version – the scene where Cady places a thumb inside the teenage daughter’s mouth is replayed here but now it is a lesbian seduction.
The ridiculously extruded story we get makes for an astonishingly bad work. It is probably the single worst work to go out with the names of either Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg attached. I have a love of fairly much everything Amy Adams does – she even executive produces Cape Fear – but she really let me down in a big way on this one. The mini-series is filled with ridiculous pieces of plotting. Cady manages to improbably turn up everywhere – holding press interviews at their office, walking onto their property, in Patrick Wilson’s members club, even turning up in their kitchen making himself a sandwich. All is presided over by Javier Bardem, over-acting with a wolfish smile.
Indeed, Cady has no real other purpose in the mini-series that to act as a deus ex machina and contrive a ridiculous series of plot twists every episode to torment the Bowden family in some way. Cady and Neveah are not real characters – they only exist in the script to keep creating more plot complications. These include:-
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– Both the Bowden children are seduced and lured by a girl (Malia Pyles) who catfishes the teenage son (Joe Anders) and then conducts a lesbian seduction of the teenage daughter (Lily Collias) before being revealed to be Cady’s teenage daughter (apparently sired while he was still in jail)
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– A contrivation where Amy Adams is forced to ask Cady’s help in freeing another prisoner on death row
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– Cady buys the house right across the road from the Bowdens
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– Cady’s daughter runs and is hit by a car and contrives to have it filmed and uploaded to social media to make it appear that Any Adams pushed her in front of the car
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– Patrick Wilson has a cautious flirtation with colleague Margarita Levieva. Cady picks up on this and somehow accesses Patrick’s phone to send Margarita much more aggressive messages and have Patrick suspended from his own firm for sexual harassment
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– A white trash couple stray into the Bowden backyard and make themselves at home around the pool before Patrick Wilson confronts them with a gun. Later Patrick and Cady are in a bar and meet the couple where Cady invites them to drinks and then contrives a barroom fight and works it so that Patrick Wilson is seen beating the man up on cctv
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– The family’s drinks are spiked with hallucinogens
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– Cady’s daughter Neveah goes missing and then turns up alive, somehow having hidden in the crawlspace of the house that the Bowdens never realised they had
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– Cady manipulates both of the Bowden children to the point where they both individually come to believe throughout the course of the story that he is their real father
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– Cady kills the firm’s private investigator (Jamie Hector) and then dumps the body in the Bowden swimming pool, managing to use Patrick Wilson’s 9mm gun in a way that leaves him arrested for the murder
The height of this absurdity is when we come to the end of Episode 9 where three out of the four members of the Bowden household have all been separately arrested or incarcerated – and then all three manage to either escape or be released for the showdown with Cady in the climactic scenes.
One of the funniest aspects of Cape Fear is how throughout Cady is now characterised as Latino – he is seen speaking Spanish and the role of course is cast with Spanish actor Javier Bardem. However, when we meet Cady’s family, they are all standard Southern rednecks without a hint of Latino about them. It seems laughable that nobody in the showrunning or script editing aspect of the series could actually work out the disconnect.
The person responsible for such an abortion is Nick Antosca who has been a writer and story editor on various tv series and created the horror anthology series Channel Zero (2016-8) and other series such as The Act (2019), the horror series Brand New Cherry Flavor (2021), Candy (2022) and A Friend of the Family (2022). In addition, he also wrote the scripts for the horror films The Cottage (2012), The Forest (2016) and Antlers (2021).
Trailer here