Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of the primordial Robert Mitchum/Gregory Peck thriller Cape Fear is largely remembered today for Robert De Niro’s huffing and puffing portrayal of vengeful lunatic Max Cady.Hammy as a chilled-meat counter, De Niro’s performance can, with hindsight, be regarded as the beginning of the long nosedive his career took in the 1990s and beyond – his anti-McConaissance. Cape Fear was where De Niro first cloaked himself in mediocrity.Today, the film is regarded as a curio – not quite a blot on the CV’s of Scorsese or De Niro yet certainly no classic. So it’s a mystery why anyone would think this schlocky genre exercise required a binge-era revival with an all-new Cape Fear (Apple TV+, Friday). This has obviously not dissuaded Apple – or an over-the-top Javier Bardem, who takes on De Niro’s mantle as the sociopathic Cady.There is a sense of things coming full circle for Bardem, who broke through by playing mop-topped lunatic Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men in 2007. He now returns to the boggle-eyed well as the unhinged Cady, though the turn suffers from being just one barking element among many in an over-stuffed thriller.The new Cape Fear’s biggest departure is to gender swap Amy Adams as the lawyer whom Cady blames for shutting him away 17 years previously for the murder of his pregnant partner. At the time, Anna was Cady’s defence attorney. He has never forgiven her for pleading guilty on his behalf before running off with the prosecuting lawyer, Tom. Seventeen years later Anna and Tom (a bland Patrick Wilson) live in legal eagle opulence, enjoying an extravagant lifestyle built on the suffering of their clients.There is a suggestion that their relationship – conducted in violation of legal ethics – is their original sin and that this seed of darkness has been passed down to their children. Anna’s daughter Natalie (with whom she was pregnant when she had her fling with future spouse Tom) is unhappily in the closet. Meanwhile, Anna and Tom’s son, Zack, has gone full incel after an incident involving a girl in his class.Zack is played by Joe Anders, the son of Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes. As nepo-babies go, he is largely unobjectionable. He brings a sweaty-palmed verisimilitude to the part of a teen who has locked himself away to play Fortnite with his mysterious new girlfriend.Yet all of these performances are overshadowed by Bardem’s Cady. Released from prison after a discrepancy is found in his original conviction, he immediately begins to gaslight Anna and her family. Not so much chewing the scenery as chomping on it wholesale, Bardem gets stuck into the script like an unhinged panto-dame, his histrionics leaving his fellow cast at a loss. A thriller lives or dies by its ability to ratchet up the tension. Alas, Cape Fear gives too much away from the outset. After some effective foreshadowing involving the appearance of a drowned family of skunks in the Bowdens’ swimming pool, the script shows its hand early by having Cady bound into the frame. He cackles and waggles his eyebrows in a manner that suggests they might break free from his face at any moment and soar heavenwards.What’s hardest to understand is how a pair of presumably bright lawyers such as the Bowdens are flummoxed by his bulldozing attempts at revenge. When Zack goes missing, they presume he’s off with friends. Their shock knows no bounds when it emerges that Cady might be involved – resulting in a grotesque scene involving a severed toe. The frequent jump-scares are equally cack-handed. At one point a friend of a character calls over, sneaks through a doorway behind their backs, then leaps out and is surprised when their pal screams in shock.This new Cape Fear seems to fancy itself more sophisticated than its predecessors, asking us to consider the true villains in this scenario: the pampered lawyers or the natural-born killer? But it isn’t nearly as subtle as it thinks it is. Worse yet, the whole thing is cranked up to breaking point by Bardem, who has all the nuance of a jet landing on a golf course.