The Story Archive

Cape Fear

Martin Scorsese · 1991 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A convicted rapist finishes fourteen years inside having taught himself law, and turns up in the Carolina town where the public defender who buried a report that might have helped him now lives with a wife and a teenage daughter. He befriends the girl at her school theatre and stays scrupulously within the law wherever the family can see him. Scorsese remade a 1962 thriller as a study of a household.

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Attributes

Genre
ThrillerGothicPsychological
Theme
Justice & RevengeGuilt & ConscienceTemptation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
AvengerEverymanShadow
Plot structure
Revenge CycleSiege / Last Stand
Symbol / motif
The RiverThe StormThe Ship / Boat
Conflict
vs Personvs Self
Mode / tone
GothicIronic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues