SXSW '25: The Rivals of Amziah King

As the foremost scholar of Matthew McConaughey in Austin—and someone who is named Ziah (I am Ziah)—I felt duty-bound to see The Rivals of Amziah King when it had its World Premiere at SXSW in 2025. I tend not to watch trailers or read marketing materials for a film I already plan to see whenever possible, which meant that I walked into this film entirely ignorant about its content outside of the fact that it involved bees in some way. In many ways, I think that’s exactly how the film is meant to be seen: The Rivals of Amziah King is one of the most strangely-paced films and thematically-incohesive films I’ve ever seen. That’s both to its benefit and its greatest flaw.

To put it simply, Rivals is about Amziah (McConaughey), a beekeeper who loves music and his small-town community who might just have a dark past buried somewhere in between his hives. His day-to-day routine is interrupted by the discovery of a barrel of stolen honey that the local police want answers about, and the return of a former foster daughter, Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass), who has some reservations about re-entering Amziah’s life. Tonally, the film vacillates between a crime thriller about the criminal underground of rival beekeeper operations and a quiet family drama about two lonely people finding family again.

By threading the needle between two fairly disparate genres, director and writer Andrew Patterson is able to create a consistently unique film. One opening scene begins as a character-driven comedy before shifting into terror with one of the most upsettingly gruesome injuries I’ve ever seen outside of horror films and then ends on a dry punchline in a hospital room. It keeps the viewer on the back foot, constantly trying to keep up with where the film is going in a way that feels fresh, although it sometimes feels amateurish in how it balances tones.

Even on the micro level, individual scenes feel at odds with themselves; a scene in which Amziah holds the queen bee as his arm is swarmed with the colony to show Kateri the importance of community and leadership is backed by a stirring musical accompaniment even as the scene is shot in a solemn and almost creepy register.

Most of the first hour of Rivals feels devoted to bucking genre conventions and exploring the characters—Amziah is relentlessly kind and patient to everyone he meets, with whatever dark past he may or may not have seemingly banished by hard work and bee rearing. At one point, he tells Kateri, “I’d rather be patient than smart,” which seems to define both his steady way of moving through the world and the film’s pacing. Kateri seems constantly skittish, refusing to settle into a comfortable routine until she’s entirely sure that it’s safe. It almost feels like the film is setting up a darker past for her and Amziah than what’s ultimately revealed.

When the film does solidify into more straightforward genre thrills in the back half, there’s an expected pleasure to it—Patterson’s control of tone becomes more clear, and the writing hits an enjoyable redneck Coen brothers-esque energy with comedy punctuating action set pieces throughout. But it also comes at the loss of a thornier, more complicated film. Characters become defined by their present actions rather than their pasts in a way that feels purposeful, but that unavoidably puts them at a remove from the viewer.

We see how Kateri and the other characters enact their goals, but the “why” of it becomes slippery and ambiguous. As with the first half, it’s sometimes unclear how purposeful it all is and how much Patterson himself has thought about why these events happen the way they do.

That extends to the visual style as well. Cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz captures some beautiful shots of the forests and plains of Alabama, and is able to beautifully convey how magical caring for the beehives feels for Kateri and Amziah with golden hour-tinged lighting and wide-open skies. Low-light scenes in cramped locations feel at once cramped and freeing, forcing the viewer to decide scene to scene how they feel about the events occurring.

If there is an undeniably steady presence in the film, it’s McConaughey, giving one of the finest performances he’s given in over a decade. He imbues Amziah with a complicated density, implying a far more complex character than the script explores in the film itself. He gives the film a satisfying weight as we explore the world and wider cast through his presence, slowly drawing Kateri out of her shell. And while LookingGlass sometimes falters in longer dialogue scenes, her performance really shines when she’s observing a scene, thinking through her next move as she navigates a larger world of bee-related crime. And it’s worth noting that the wider cast commits themselves expertly in their small roles—former Riverdale star (and Managing Editor remus fave) Cole Sprouse shines in a comedy-driven cameo as a small-time criminal who works at a fast food restaurant on the side, and Owen Teague as one of Amziah’s proteges provides great chemistry with LookingGlass.

Ultimately, Rivals becomes an odd beast of a film—sometimes feeling like an incredibly confident follow-up to Patterson’s debut film The Vast of Night, sometimes feeling like an ambitious epic that gets away from the director and his team. Still, it’s an interesting knot to untangle and worth spending time with these actors and the characters they play.

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