Sam Bowden has always provided for his family's future. But the past is coming back to haunt them.

Sam Bowden is a small-town corporate attorney. Max Cady is a tattooed, cigar-smoking, Bible-quoting, psychotic rapist. What do they have in common? 14 years ago, Sam was a public defender assigned to Max Cady's rape trial, and he made a serious error: he hid a document from his illiterate client that could have gotten him acquitted. Now, the cagey Cady has been released, and he intends to teach Sam Bowden and his family a thing or two about loss.
Cape Fear keeps every mind human — it fights its subject at zero distance. The story fights on E8/E9 of the E0–E14 reality ladder.
Films fighting at the same level of reality, about the same things.
The same preoccupations examined at another scale — one mind versus a nation.