'Cape Fear' reinvents itself again with chilling, charming Javier Bardem
Key takeaways
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- Cape Fear,” premiering Friday on Apple TV, is a 10-episode limited series remake of a 1991 Martin Scorsese remake of a 1962 film adapted from John D.
- In each iteration, a family is menaced by a recently released ex-con who blames one or more of them for his incarceration.
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Cape Fear,” premiering Friday on Apple TV, is a 10-episode limited series remake of a 1991 Martin Scorsese remake of a 1962 film adapted from John D. Mac Donald’s 1957 novel “The Executioners,” and as in a game of telephone each subsequent version adds new material and moves a little farther from the original. (The credits to the series, created by Nick Antosca, note all previous sources and screenwriters.) Thirty-four years having passed since the last go-round, we are treated to such modern advances as catfishing, drones, deep fakes, social media and pushy true-crime podcasters.
In each iteration, a family is menaced by a recently released ex-con who blames one or more of them for his incarceration. Antosca fills his extra-long take on the material with complications and inventions; though the series is also chock full of borrowings from and allusions to its predecessors — you can hardly call them Easter eggs, lying there as they do in plain sight. (And sound: Bernard Herrmann and Elmer Bernstein‘s earlier scores share space with Jeff Russo’s new one.)