Cape Fear (2026)

I can’t say I felt much of anything for the characters, or was concerned whether the Bowdens would emerge from their ordeals a stronger family. (Whatever the outcome, I’d say they have work to do.) Having been given only eight of 10 episodes to review, I’m interested, in a disinterested way, how this all will shake out.

Like Max Cady smirking in the shadows, Cape Fear overstays its welcome, but it does so with bursts of intemperate amusement and, like its predecessors, a cast to die — or exact revenge — for.

Of the three major Cape Fear screen efforts it’s firmly in bronze position, though it does make a later dash for something better.

Javier Bardem is incredible as Max Cady, but Apple TV's new "Cape Fear" is a mixed bag, stretching its plot too thin with ridiculous twists.

Cape Fear doesn't have the same creative audacity as Fargo. It's perfectly fine, I suppose, but not more than that. Frankly, I was expecting a little more, Counselor.

With 10 hourlong episodes of miniseries to fill (eight of which critics were given to screen ahead of the premiere) there is simply time for too much to happen in Apple’s adaptation, and it can’t all be gold. .... Worst of all, this new Max Cady has all kinds of new backstory, and the show inserts you into his subjectivity far too often. .... You risk a lot when you do this much explaining of a man who should feel like a terrifying act of God.

In blowing the movie into a 10-episode series, this Apple TV version becomes increasingly bloated and ungainly.

Apple TV stretches the tight, twisted cinema of “Cape Fear” into a lazy, logic-free 10-hour series only worth watching to see Javier Bardem have a go at the psycho stalker role previously played for keeps by both Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro.

On any other man, this level of villainy could be mustache-twirling and cartoonish. On Bardem, it's just plain scary. But one man cannot carry an entire TV series, not even one as talented as Bardem. And someone or something needs to prop up "Cape Fear", a prime example of wasted potential and excessive bloat in our streaming TV era.