Starring Matthew McConaughey and Tye Sheridan. Rated PG.

“It’s a hell of a thing!” That’s what Matthew McConaughey’s character says about his new digs: a boat suspended high in a tree, above an island formed by a bend in the big water separating Arkansas from Mississippi. The man, whose name is Mud, is clearly beating his feet in the wrong direction.

The skinny, snaggletoothed stranger shot a monster who hurt his lifelong sweetheart, or so he tells two 14-year-old boys who happen upon him and his unusual treehouse. The more savvy Neckbone (newcomer Jacob Lofland) wants to get away, but the sensitive Ellis (Tye Sheridan) is entranced. Something about how far a man will go for love.

Ellis is susceptible to someone “who doesn’t often traffic in the truth”, by his own admission, because his river-dwelling parents (Sarah Paulson and Ray McKinnon) are a bit short on the sweet stuff lately. In the best southern-gothic tradition, words are at a premium—as are overt musical cues—and every utterance is freighted with possible meanings. Writer-director Jeff Nichols is riffing on Huckleberry Finn and other outlaw tales while building on his previous efforts. Nichols’s Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter starred The Iceman’s Michael Shannon as men battling nature and rival clans, and Mud is so much more relaxed that Shannon gets to play one of the more normal characters.

Also aboard is Sam Shepard as the ornery old-timer who helped raise fatherless Mud, and Reese Witherspoon as the gal who always gets Mud’s wheels spinning. The cast is just about perfect, and the 130-minute film plays out like an existential tone poem with an action-movie kicker. But beyond the fable’s rich aesthetic appeal, McConaughey—who roughed up for a part that’s more myth than man—could have told the entire story sitting on a bar stool in an empty room, and damned if you wouldn’t still be hooked.