// THE VERGE — INTELLIGENZA ARTIFICIALE
Apple TV’s Cape Fear remake turns it into a paranoid tech thriller
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The series updates the classic revenge story with drones, AI, and more.
The series updates the classic revenge story with drones, AI, and more.
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Cape Fear has always been a thriller about paranoia. And in 2026 there are few things less trustworthy than technology.
Apple TV’s recent remake of Cape Fear is “inspired” by the 1991 film of the same name (Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg even returned as executive producers on the project), which itself is a remake of a 1962 movie that was an adaptation of the novel The Executioners by John D. MacDonald. The series is essentially a brand-new story within a similar premise, and it makes a number of significant changes to make it both fit the new episodic format and feel right at home in the present day. One of the most salient updates is how it utilizes various forms of technology to make its characters — and audience — feel increasingly destabilized.
In the just-wrapped 10-episode season, convicted murderer Max Cady (Javier Bardem) is released 17 years into a life sentence after someone else confesses to the crime. And when Cady is finally free, he puts all of his energy into making the lives of the lawyers from his trial — defense attorney Anna Bowden (Amy Adams) and prosecutor Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson), who have since married and had children — into a living hell. Cady describes his prison experience as “death by a thousand cuts,” and he goes about putting the Bowdens through a similar experience of escalating terror and violence.