Cape Fear

I don’t think I had seen this since the ’90s, at which time I scarcely noticed how deliriously over the top it is, with uniformly histrionic performances (including demented cameos from Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Martin Balsam, stars of the original 1962 Cape Fear) and spastic cinematography (courtesy of frequent David Lynch collaborator Freddie Francis). It’s very nearly a parody of its domestic thriller contemporaries (e.g. Fatal Attraction), ever teetering on the edge of camp while surpassing them all in both brutal violence and ick factor. Amid the lunacy, Juliet Lewis’s grounded performance is the standout, giving us perhaps the most realistic human teenager ever committed to film.