The Rivals of Amziah King is a movie I feel like I’m going to have to sit with for a while, and probably see a few more times, to figure out exactly which way I sway on it. It’s a movie that bites off an enormous amount of story and, for the most part, does quite a lot of it well: a traversing 130-minute film about a beekeeper, his community, his band, his former foster daughter, his bees, and, of course, his rivals. It is episodic, ambitious, occasionally overstuffed, and constantly moving between different modes of storytelling, but there is something undeniably appealing about how much director Andrew Patterson wants to pack into this thing.
It follows Matthew McConaughey‘s titular Amziah King and the community he’s cultivated throughout his life. He lives one worth living, keeping bees by day and playing music locally at night, the sort of person who feels less like a resident of his town than one of its connective tissues. His former foster daughter Kateri, played by Angelina LookingGlass in her first feature film role, returns to town and quickly reconnects with him, assimilating into his beekeeping empire and the strange, warm ecosystem of people that surrounds him. Patterson does a great job establishing this community as one that looks after its own. When accidents happen, even absurdly severe ones like a torn-off ponytail sequence that opens the film, people handle them person-to-person rather than immediately turning to lawyers or institutions. There is something almost Wild West about the place, where citizens have to take matters into their own hands and everyone seems to understand that they are responsible for keeping the community afloat.
McConaughey is perfectly cast as Amziah, and this may be his best and most committed performance in more than a decade. He has this enormous charisma that allows Patterson to build the first half around him almost entirely on vibes, music, community, and character, and it works. The quasi-musical, episodic construction of the first half is easily the most immediately enjoyable part of the movie, because you get to spend time with Amziah and understand why everyone around him seems so drawn to him. His death that nearly splits the movie in half eventually creates a McConaughey-sized hole in the movie, and Angelina LookingGlass is then tasked with carrying the second half. She’s good as Kateri, particularly in the way she quickly fits into Amziah’s world and then has to find her own footing within it, but the movie inevitably feels different without McConaughey’s ability to hold the frame.
That transition also exposes the biggest structural issue here. What begins as a warm, community-oriented character piece eventually becomes a revenge thriller, with Kateri trying to figure out who is responsible for the bee heist that directly contributed to Amziah’s fatal heart attack. I like that Patterson is willing to let the movie evolve into something completely different, but the second half doesn’t quite have the same emotional or narrative propulsion as the first. The movie is already asking you to give yourself over to a lot of tonal and structural shifts, and once the story becomes more conventionally plot-driven, some of the magic begins to dissipate.
Patterson’s sophomore film is also, at the very least, heavily directed and heavily edited. The snappy, quippy dialogue he carried over from The Vast of Night remains, but this time it’s paired with Patrick J. Smith’s rapid cutting style, which is drastically different from the more methodical rhythm Patterson employed in that film. Here, it often feels like the editing is trying to keep up with the movie rather than the other way around. There is barely a moment to breathe across the 130-minute runtime, and while I admire the ambition tremendously, the style starts to wear on you once you reach the second half. The movie has so many ideas, genres, characters, and story beats that it occasionally feels like Patterson is terrified of leaving anything on the table.
Still, I’d much rather watch a filmmaker swing this hard than one play it safe. The Rivals of Amziah King is an absurdly ambitious sophomore feature, and in the wrong hands it could have easily become a complete mess. Patterson instead builds something that is frequently fascinating even when it isn’t entirely successful. The supporting cast helps tremendously, with Patterson regular Jake Horowitz fitting naturally into the community, Cole Sprouse having a lot of fun as the hilariously named Oat, who can get Kateri almost any personal information she needs, and Tony Revolori making an impression as Colemar, the unfortunate victim of the aforementioned ponytail v. beekeeping machinery accident. The cast is expansive enough that even people who only appear for a scene or two can leave an impression, which feels appropriate for a movie so invested in the idea of community.
What I keep coming back to, though, is how much more I like this movie the longer I think about it. In the moment, the pacing and editing can be exhausting, particularly once the story loses McConaughey and turns into a more straightforward revenge thriller. But there’s so much texture here that I suspect it may age better in my mind than it played on first viewing. Patterson has taken the goodwill he earned from The Vast of Night and cashed it in on something considerably stranger, bigger, and more unwieldy, and I respect the hell out of that. It’s a movie about bees that becomes a revenge thriller that becomes a community portrait that becomes a quasi-musical and somehow manages to make most of those ingredients work.
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There is so much personality and ambition here that I can’t write it off as merely overstuffed. Patterson clearly has a lot to say and an increasingly distinctive way of saying it, and if nothing else, this is the kind of sophomore film that makes me curious about what he does next. Maybe I’ll click with this one more a decade from now. For now, it’s a very good movie that I suspect may become an even better one in my memory.
Score: 7/10
The Rivals of Amziah King (2026)
- Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Angelina LookingGlass, Jake Horowitz, Scott Shepherd, Rob Morgan, Tony Revolori, Owen Teague, Bruce Davis, Cole Sprouse, Kurt Russell
- Director: Andrew Patterson
- Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
- Runtime: 130 minutes
- Rated: R
- Release Date: August 21, 2026
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