Reviews
“Twisted Metal” Review – Bloody Peacock Series Spins Its Wheels for a Dumb Joy Ride
Peacock’s bold, bloody adaptation of the PlayStation vehicular combat classic, Twisted Metal, struggles to balance camp with car carnage.
“What do you say, John? Will you drive?”
There’s been a recent run of exceptional video game adaptations between The Last of Us, Castlevania, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and The Super Mario Bros and Sonic the Hedgehog movies. There’s no longer the same stigma that once accompanied video game series and movies. Streaming services are now taking major swings on video game IPs whether it’s Netflix’s The Witcher, Amazon’s upcoming Tomb Raider series, or Peacock’s Twisted Metal. It wasn’t long ago when a Twisted Metal TV series would have been a ludicrous venture, but it’s now as good an idea as any. Twisted Metal has a dark, absurdist world that’s had decades to develop. There’s easily a strong enough foundation for a weird and memorable limited series. Peacock’s Twisted Metal isn’t totally a junker that should be sent to the dump, but it does feel like it’s made out of spare parts from different vehicles that take too long to turn into a comfortable ride.
Twisted Metal is set two decades after a Y2K-like disaster leaves the “Divided States of America” in ruin. John Doe (Anthony Mackie), a lowly milkman who’s spent his life living on the outside, gets a chance at normalcy and an easier existence where he doesn’t need to fight tooth and nail to merely survive. John must complete the world’s most dangerous delivery gig–and stay alive in the process–in exchange for a cushy existence in New San Francisco. Unfortunately for John, a cavalcade of eclectic creeps have their eyes on the same prize. Die hard Twisted Metal fans will note that this is not the plot of the video games and it’s a lot more like a broad approximation of Twisted Metal in a generic Mad Max wasteland. Plenty of video game adaptations find success through forging original stories that use their source material merely as a springboard. Twisted Metal has bigger issues than straying from its original story, but there’s still enough reckless car catastrophes to leave fans satisfied.
Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick are executive producers on Twisted Metal and helped craft the pilot episode’s story. This dark comedy reeks of Reese and Wernick’s Zombieland and Deadpool. Wisecracking, self-aware characters try to make the best out of a post-apocalyptic living. At one point, a copy of the original Twisted Metal for the PlayStation falls on John Doe’s windshield while Anthony Mackie looks perplexed into the camera. It might as well be a scene from Deadpool. This doesn’t make any sense in the context of the series, but it effectively sets the tone for a lot of dumb, surface-level fun that’s not afraid to embrace style over substance. Later on, John Doe recites a button code from the Twisted Metal video games while he manipulates the car’s stick shift in order to activate a much-needed speed boost. That’s the level of gratuitous Easter Eggs that are in play in Twisted Metal.
Twisted Metal’s zippy scripts are full of stilted one-liners that feel hollow coming out of Mackie. The series leans hard into comedy over action, a lot of which doesn’t only miss its mark, but is just perplexing. There are certain jokes in Twisted Metal that it’s hard to imagine anyone laughing at, especially in the context of the rest of the series. Weak writing aside, Kitao Sakurai directs the season’s strongest episodes and he at least brings a chaotically entertaining visual style to this rubber-burning rampage.
Anthony Mackie has plenty of action franchise experience to his name, but he’s just not the right fit here and often becomes Twisted Metal’s least interesting character. Even Will Arnett feels like he’s phoning it in with his vocal portrayal of Twisted Metal’s maniacal mascot, Sweet Tooth. He lacks his usual flair and the performance is often lifeless. Will Arnett’s voice carries a certain cache, but Samoa Joe does such strong work with the physicality and body language that he brings to the character that it’s unfortunate that he couldn’t just do the whole thing and that such “stunt casting” is even necessary.
Twisted Metal assembles a commendable supporting cast between Stephanie Beatriz, Neve Campbell, Chloe Fineman, and Thomas Haden Church. Beatriz handles the dialogue a lot more naturally than Mackie and Twisted Metal might have kicked off to a stronger start if their roles were reversed. Curiously, it’s growing PTSD issues with Mike Mitchell’s superfluous lackey, Stu, and his shifting allegiances that become some of the season’s most compelling material.
Not all of Twisted Metal’s character dynamics and arcs are successful, but if nothing else, the series is extremely violent and stays true to its source material in this capacity. Bodies get eviscerated through turret fire while windshield wipers spread blood across the vehicle. It’s definitely a mature-rated series, but this violence hits with an almost-comedic quality. All of this is so over the top that it becomes cartoonish. Twisted Metal’s gratuitous gore is used more as a punchline than a source of tension or terror. Twisted Metal’s universe is so outlandish that this slapstick approach to carnage makes sense, but it’s leaned on too often and to diminishing returns (although there’s a fantastic extended hatchet-in-the-face practical effect in the finale).
As much as John Doe resembles Deadpool with his sarcastic asides, this post-apocalyptic world is reminiscent of first draft Zombieland ideas or concepts that would have made it into the TV series. Dystopian wastelands of weirdos have become increasingly common (Miracle Workers is even in the middle of a Mad Max-inspired season), but none of Twisted Metal’s ideas are unique. There’s also a really artificial sheen to Twisted Metal’s world and some of its bigger stunts that don’t do it any favors. There’s no weight to any of it and it comes across as the opposite of Mad Max: Fury Road; not that anyone was expecting a George Miller level spectacle here. Any of the sequences where characters are actually in their vehicles are visually dynamic, but there’s far too much time spent on foot where the vehicles feel like afterthoughts. That’s not to say that Twisted Metal should consist purely of demolition derbies, but without the cars there’s nothing here that audiences can’t get elsewhere and better.
Twisted Metal does slowly find a rhythm and pick a lane, at which point it’s a lot easier to enjoy these heavy-handed caricatures and their explosive antics with modest expectations. The finale is easily the season’s best entry and when the series finally, truly feels like Twisted Metal and not just cosplay in a wasteland with cars. Twisted Metal is dumb fun that’s big, broad, and unabashedly bloody. It’s nowhere near the level of The Last of Us or even SyFy’s Blood Drive, but it’s campy escapism that doesn’t ask much of its audience. Twisted Metal sets up a more action-packed second season that will more closely resemble the video games and likely be an improvement upon this divided and diluted start. That being said, most audiences may not even make it to the finish line and there’s a good chance Twisted Metal ends up on the streaming scrap heap.
Your move, Vigilante 8.
Season one of ‘Twisted Metal’ is now available to stream on Peacock.
This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Reviews
‘Cape Fear’ Redefines A Cutthroat Classic & Turns The American Dream Into A Psychological Nightmare [Review]
Hollywood has been stuck in a trend where a recognizable property — any recognizable property — holds more value than an original idea. This has led to a trend where a slew of acclaimed films have transitioned over to television and become limited series, because why not?
Which has led to a very mixed bag of results that’s usually viewed as a hollow exercise in IP renewal that’s become a growing cliche that’s something to mock. Dead Ringers, Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent, and even The Birds are just some of the most recent titles in the movie-to-limited series pipeline. Admittedly, this formula can still work. It just needs to actually have not only a point of view, but a point, otherwise it’s destined to disappear into the vast streaming abyss.
Cape Fear definitely has a point of view and is well aware that it’s the fourth proper adaptation of this story — fifth if The Simpsons’ masterful “Cape Feare” parody is included. It’s an adaptation that’s not only aware of its past’s baggage, but intentionally embraces it and uses it to its advantage. Nick Antosca’s Cape Fear is so exciting because it functions as a remix of every version of this story — the ’60s film, Martin Scorsese’s ’90s remake, and John D. MacDonald’s original novel, The Executioners — to create this glorious amalgamation of the narrative. It’s not unlike what was done with Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal series and how it remixed the breadth of Thomas Harris’ works and their cinematic adaptations.
This approach is most effective when certain iconic scenes from the ’90s film are recontextualized and given to different characters in order to make grander thematic statements. It’s a really striking approach that reflects the generational ripples and overlap between these adaptations, yet it’s never distracting or ostentatious to anyone who is experiencing this story for the first time. It helps this series feel different from the deluge of forgettable adaptations that are flooding the market.
On paper, Antosca is the perfect showrunner to tell this story. He has an impressive body of work to pull from that includes horror series like Channel Zero, Hannibal, and Brand New Cherry Flavor, but also lots of true-crime titles like The Act, A Friend of the Family, and Candy. This series falls squarely within these two extremes as it blurs the lines between these genres and styles of horror storytelling. It’s Big Little Lies on bath salts. Cape Fear perhaps doesn’t need to exist, but it’s still a hell of a terrifying experience that has something timely to say.
Horror is full of stories in which one bad day is all it takes to break someone and turn them into a completely different person. Cape Fear isn’t doing exactly this. It’s more of a psychological waterboarding until the target’s sense of self is eroded to rubble. However, it takes the kernel of this idea and expands it onto the pristine ideal of the picturesque American family. It plays with the self-aware realization that the stories we tell are not necessarily what we think they are.
It’s a story about forgiveness, salvation, and revenge that blows up the Bowden family when a violent offender, Max Cady (Javier Bardem), is released from prison and systematically sets his sights on the people he holds accountable. Anna and Tom Bowden (Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson), the married couple who represented his case in court, receive a rude awakening when Cady’s psychological torture tour begins. Cape Fear, as a property, is most famously known for being the ultimate cat-and-mouse psychological thriller. This rendition culminates in such an explosive climax that’s right out of a slasher film.
Antosca was involved with an unproduced Friday the 13th reboot draft back in 2015, and there are certainly moments in which Max Cady moves with the hulking intensity of Jason Voorhees. So much of what makes all this work rests on Bardem’s complex performance. He’s very careful not to just copy Robert Mitchum or Robert De Niro’s versions of Cady, while he also taps into a terrifying intensity that feels completely different from what he brought forward with No Country for Old Men’s Anton Chigurh.
Apple TV’s new series also introduces a mental injury to Cady that adds psychological fractures that pull him between different versions of events as he struggles to grasp the truth. It’s an element that’s not exactly necessary and often feels like a convenient obstacle that can be activated whenever necessary. However, it allows for some creative visual flourishes and more opportunities for Bardem to get lost in Cady’s complexities.
Opposite Bardem’s Cady, Adams and Wilson do some of their best work as Anna and Tom. Anna is much more front and center than Tom, and Cape Fear is really Adams and Bardem’s time to shine. Wilson still does amazing, understated work, especially whenever the rug gets pulled out from under him regarding someone in his family. The visceral, brutal violence that Cady introduces to the Bowden family hits hard and highlights the anger and intensity that’s fundamental to this story.
What Cape Fear does best is its enlightening deconstruction of the ideal American family, how much work it takes to preserve such a pure thing, and the lengths that people go when they feel like the sanctity of this union is under fire. All it takes is for one of these foundational pillars to weaken before the whole unit becomes compromised. It moves the damage and pressure from one family member to the next as everyone struggles, and it’s unclear what will be left of this family when all is said and done.
This dynamic makes Cape Fear’s story so much more layered and interesting than if the series were just focused on Cady, Anna, and Tom, rather than making their children as much of a priority. Each member of the Bowden family experiences their own obstacles and arcs, although Natalie (Lily Collias) and Zack’s (Joe Anders) storylines are often the most grating. It all boils down to forgiveness, identity, and wanting to be perceived as the person we think we are, versus how we’re viewed by the public, and the dangerous dissonance that can exist between these separate selves.
These ideas are at their most potent when Cape Fear taps into the growing paranoia that bubbles up to the surface and becomes unbearable, so that even the littlest action is triggering. These moments are usually captured through a more erratic filming style that ramps up the tension for both the characters and the audience, unsure of what will strike and when.
Cape Fear never struggles to create uncomfortable setpieces where the anxiety just crescendos and hangs over the scene. On this note, the series’ musical score really captures the perfect aesthetic. It immediately evokes the suspenseful power of the previous Cape Fear films whenever Bernard Herrmann’s virtuosic original theme kicks in. It’s magic every single time.
Antosca delivers an exhilarating update to a classic thriller that pushes its source material to exciting, new places that justify its existence. It’s an exciting story that’s full of terrifying performances and cataclysmic consequences. Admittedly, Cape Fear could have been shortened to eight episodes rather than ten. There are a few plot threads that feel unnecessary and artificially expanded upon, but every episode is still an adrenaline-pumping experience.
If nothing else, it reminds audiences why Cape Fear is such an evergreen story that’s lasted the test of time and will continue to unnerve and get under the skin of whole new generations.
The 10-episode series will make its global debut on June 5 with a two-episode premiere on Apple TV, followed by new episodes every Friday through July 31, 2026.
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