Cape Fear fails to justify itself in a fitfully entertaining finale

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Over the last couple months, Cape Fear viewers have become increasingly polarized. Detractors like me have taken issue with the frustrating and inconsistent characterization, not to mention the tediousness of watching Max Cady torture and toy around with these Bowden nincompoops over and over. But certain defenders (including from that initial crop of positive pre-air reviews) have argued that Cape Fear isn’t trying to be that deep. This is a pulpy thriller about family and revenge, not some thoughtful exploration of the “criminal injustice system,” and thus it shouldn’t be held to certain standards. 

In that first episode, though, it really felt like Nick Antosca was shooting for something interesting with this adaptation. And while the pace has ratcheted up in the miniseries’ second half—especially with dud Zack largely out of the picture and Nat finally wising up to Cady’s true nature—the characters and themes themselves haven’t evolved much. In fact, it’s strange to even think back to that premiere, especially that magnetic initial Cady monologue that subtly undercut Anna and Tom while charming the pants off everyone in the room. That version of the show just had so much more ambiguity, so much more promise. The ingredients were here for something fun and stylish but also thought-provoking. In the end, Cape Fear squandered most of that potential. 

“The Executioners,” named after John D. MacDonald’s source material, kicks off with some big character deaths. Last week, I wasn’t sure how Cady would react to the scuffle between his sister, father, and son, and we learn the answer in the opening minutes: He burns them all to death. It’s a bit of a disappointing end for Crystal, who was finally beginning to become more than just another mentally ill victim of Max Cady, but at least the carnage starts the finale off on an eventful note. 

The pace doesn’t let up from there, and in some cases the show gets pretty silly in the effort to move things along. Take the Melissa & Adam restaurant opening, during which Anna publicly plays audio of Nevaeh explaining Cady’s manipulations to Nat in juvie, then projects the FaceTime conversation of Cady getting Amy Brancato to kill herself (courtesy of that USB). It’s ridiculous, but I actually appreciate the opportunity to see Cady in panic mode for once, and to see Anna in the position of taunting him, even provoking him into choking her by claiming he did kill his wife, something she knows didn’t happen now. (After all, he did spend the chat reassuring Amy how little Melissa means to him.) I would’ve liked to see more of that flipped dynamic throughout the season. 

Of course, Anna doesn’t have the upper hand for long. In an irritating and completely predictable turn, Cady manages to escape police custody by tricking one solitary cop into helping him get his seizure medication. And it happens just as Hurricane Wesley comes to town, forcing everyone to take shelter.

So all hell breaks loose, as it must in a finale. Cady evading the cops’ search by standing on the Bowdens’ rooftop makes for a hilarious image, and the flash of his smile as he jumps in through a window like a vampire is even goofier. And the confrontation that follows isn’t all that much better. It goes down as you’d expect, in many ways: Cady wants to stage another trial, this time putting the spotlight on the lawyers who conspired to ruin his life. The kids, including a zip-tied Nat and a heavily drugged Zack, are the “jury.”

Cady forces Anna to come clean once and for all about what she did to him, which means we get some more solid answers ourselves. And… there’s not all that much we didn’t already know. The “reveal” here, if there is one, is that the jury in Cady’s trial was deadlocked and might’ve let him walk—but Anna put him away instead of getting him a good deal, scared about Nat’s potential parentage.

At times, this series has shown some interest in critiquing Anna and Tom, two people who are not very good partners or parents or lawyers. Early on, I liked the idea of this adaptation flipping the script a bit, especially with the twist that Max Cady probably wasn’t guilty of the crime that sent him to prison. But the show makes it impossible to see Cady’s side, especially when Anna and Tom really did believe he killed his wife. Here, he claims that he wasn’t a monster until Anna and Tom turned him into one, but that’s hardly true. And the reveal of Anna’s pretty basic violation 17 years ago doesn’t land as hard when the show spent so long keeping its audience in the dark. After all this time, Anna and Tom weren’t even sleeping together during the trial!

Nat does get her hero moment, burning through her zip tie and shooting a nail into Cady’s head when he chases her. Zack, too: After recalling that warm memory of fishing with his father, he remembers who he is and tackles Cady to the ground. Again, both of these moments would land better if we had a real investment in Nat and especially Zack as characters, but they get the job done. The real win here, on a psychological level, is Anna proving to Cady that Luke was his and Melissa’s son. Cady unknowingly murdered his own son—the very son he wanted to avenge this whole time—just earlier that day.

It’s a messed-up twist, and I appreciate it for that. I also appreciate the ultimate resolution, at least in theory: Anna and Tom have the option to kill Cady by drowning him in the pool, but ultimately decide to let him rot in prison instead. Just last week, I hoped that Cady wouldn’t die; here, though, it barely makes sense that the Bowdens let him live, especially given their general moral flexibility and the strong case for self-defense. The epilogue barbecue clarifies that the Bowdens won’t easily move on from this—both Anna and Tom seem deeply paranoid, and with good reason—but it’s hard to feel satisfied by any of it, especially without even some basic closure about Nat’s DNA test.

So we’re left with a final flash of a photo negative image, one last reference to an adaptation far superior to this one. Did another version of Cape Fear need to exist? No, not really. But it does now, and maybe that means at least a decade will pass before the next one. We can only pray.

Stray observations