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Cape Fear is the best thing on TV right now — a thriller that’s not so much gripping as throttling.
It’s a super-intense remake of the 1991 Martin Scorsese film starring Robert De Niro (and the original 1962 classic with Robert Mitchum) as murdering ex-con Max Cady, who makes it his mission to destroy the family of the lawyer he thinks betrayed him. Javier Bardem is a brutally charismatic Cady in this new version, with Amy Adams as his lawyer and Patrick Wilson as her husband, the prosecutor who put Cady away 17 years ago. Joe Anders plays one of their children, Zach, a troubled teen who Cady zones in on.
“What jumped out at me with Zach was how much he’s put through the wringer,” says the 22-year-old, who is outstandingly good in a show not lacking in quality performances. “They sent me the description of the character and what happens to him. I was so excited, but as I’m moving down the page my smile slowly fades and I just start shitting myself because he gets so manipulated and torn apart.”
Indeed. By the time we meet Zach he’s already been ostracised at school for an incident with a girl. But this is nothing compared to what Cady has in store.
Think catfishing, drugging and severed digits — and that’s just episode one.
What Cape Fear does well is draw together contemporary fears around young people, social media, con artists and outright psychos in a milieu of distrust and division. “Zach has retreated to this position of being influenced through his devices because all of his friends have gone away,” says Anders. “But there is this terror that underlies the whole thing. Everything that happens might pop up again on a phone. And a lot of the tension comes from this misreading of situations.”
Anders will next be seen in Netflix’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, which will surely reinforce his reputation as one of the hottest new talents around. While he certainly has the family pedigree — his mum is Kate Winslet (she directed Anders’s first screenplay, Goodbye June, released last year) and his dad is director Sam Mendes — he initially resisted acting. “I wanted to steer clear of it for a long time,” he says. “I had always really loved it, just not allowed myself to enjoy it because of the family I was born into. I felt like it wasn’t an option. Then the day came when I was like, ‘I’m interested in giving it my best shot and seeing how it works for me.’”
It’s working out well — and it helps when you’re doing scenes opposite Bardem. “There is one moment where I’m sat across from Javier, and when he’s in character as Max, he just gives off this animalistic heat. It’s incredible. I didn’t even really need to get into character. I just had to look at him and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m there now’.”