Javier Bardem Takes Over De Niro’s Peak of Fear

At the start of the miniseries "Cape Fear," whose first two episodes premiered on Friday on Apple TV+, the heroine Anna Bowden asks her husband Tom whether he ever stops, looks around and "wonder[s] if we deserve all this?" She is referring to all the good fortune, the wealth, the idyllic family life they have been blessed with. It is a classic opening line for a horror genre story, one that promises everything is about to turn upside down. You do not say things like that without even one bit of superstition for protection. She is inviting the devil in, and it will come back to haunt her. The devil in human form in the series is Max Cady, who served 17 years in prison for the brutal murder of his pregnant wife, a murder I will not describe here. It is worth noting that this new series is gripping and suspenseful, but also frightening. It is not for the faint of heart, and not for pet owners or animal lovers either. What happens to them in the early episodes are ominous hints of what is to come. The violence is abundant, in black and white in flashbacks and in color in the present, mostly blood red. There are also plenty of jump scares and gross-out moments, consider yourself warned. Cady is released from prison when someone else takes responsibility for the murder of his wife and reveals hidden details about it that only the killer could have known. But Cady does not emerge without a thirst for revenge against the prosecutor in his trial and his defense attorney, Anna and Tom Bowden, who married and started a family shortly after the trial that sent him to prison. Anna, who represented him, works on releasing prisoners who are serving time because of miscarriages of justice. The series "Cape Fear" is an adaptation of Martin Scorsese’s 1991 psychological thriller, an intelligent and frightening horror film, preceded by a 1962 film. Both are based on John D. MacDonald’s book "The Executioners." In the films, attorney Sam Bowden becomes Cady’s victim when Cady is released from prison and begins stalking him and his family. Cady is convinced that Bowden betrayed him in the past as his lawyer and withheld information that could have helped him at trial. But revenge is served cold and over a long period of time, not in one swift blow. Cady makes contact with the Bowden family’s children and terrorizes them, getting under their skin and undermining their sense of security. As the films progress, the tension builds toward a violent and dangerous confrontation. In Scorsese’s film from 35 years ago, Nick Nolte played the lawyer, while Robert De Niro delivered a masterful performance as the avenger. He created one of the most sophisticated and terrifying villains, and set off a wave of muscular, tattooed bad guys who enter an apparently normal, quiet world and turn it upside down, among other things because the normal people whose lives they invade have something to hide. In the 1960s film, the legendary actors Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum played the defense attorney and the killer, respectively. The new series continues the tradition and casts major stars, except that the struggle is not only between men. Amy Adams ("American Hustle," "Sharp Objects") is the defense attorney and Javier Bardem, who already specialized in being terrifying in the Coen brothers’ "No Country for Old Men," is the vengeful psychopath. Both are excellent in their roles and present the characters in a complex way. It is not only the gender shift here that feels contemporary, but also the technology, true crime podcasts, iPhones, social networks penetrating our private lives. The ten-episode series allows for an exploration of other family themes. It is longer and more current, so the gap between parents and children in the family, which Cady manages to exploit in the film, gets more room, and there are more ways to reach the children without the parents knowing. The problems with the teenage son, who shuts himself in his room with video games, receive more space in the plot. The life of the daughter, also a teenager, is shown in detail, with an emphasis on sexuality, and on how she must cope with the new threat that has fallen on her family. More than that, it is clear that the parents are not perfect. There is no dichotomy here between devil and angels. The canvas is broader, fuller, and no less symbolic, what is truly frightening here? The threat of a killer, or the fear that your children are strangers to you. Recent adaptations of films from the 1980s and 1990s, such as the thriller "Presumed Innocent" and the drama "The Four Seasons" (whose second season is currently airing on Netflix), suggest that the series ending may not necessarily match the endings of the films that preceded it. There is always the option of more seasons in the pipeline. That leaves plenty of room for tension and concern. In other words, that alone is frightening enough.