It’s a normal November day in Northern California when Paul Greengrass‘ latest slice of harrowing true-life action-drama, “The Lost Bus” kicks off — at least, a normal November day in the late aughts in a drought-choked country. The wind whips, the vegetation snaps, the electrical towers howl. It’s been over 200 days since it rained. The Camp Fire, California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire, is a few hours off from igniting and ripping through the town of Paradise and its neighbors, but the stage is set. It has been for weeks. Hell, it has been for years.
Down in the town, Kevin McKay’s (Matthew McConaughey) life is already on the brink of destruction. The facts of his life are presented bluntly: born and raised in Paradise, he only returned when his long-estranged father died, and he’s now stuck helping his vaguely ailing mother (his real-life mother, Kay McConaughey), dealing with a teenage son who loathes him (his real-life son Levi McConaughey), wrestling with an ex-wife who can’t stand him (Kimberli Flores), and trying to scrap together whatever money he can earn from his new job driving a school bus. The night before the fire breaks out, he has to put his beloved dog down. That’s where this starts.
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Adapted from Lizzie Johnson’s book “Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire,” Greengrass and Brad Inglesby’s script takes both a macro and micro look at the hellish events of November 2018, ostensibly building them around what Kevin will eventually be called to do. As the fire builds outside of town, Kevin’s life continues to go off the rails, and Greengrass effectively builds tension around twinning concerns: the morning the fire finally ignites, Kevin is busy trying to finish up his morning bus route and get some Tylenol for an ailing Shaun. Just that: Tylenol, something so basic and so essential, but as the seeming impossibility of Kevin managing to pull even that off tightens, so too does the ring of fire engulfing Paradise and beyond.
Communication breakdowns of all sorts rule supreme in the first act of “The Lost Bus.” Just as Kevin can’t communicate with his ex and son, the town of Paradise struggles to send out official evacuation orders and the Cal Fire team tasked with taking on the fire (led by a wonderful Yul Vasquez as fire chief Ray Martinez) are reduced to screaming radio chatter. By the time all the modes of communication actually go down, no one has been able to effectively share what they need for quite some time.
That’s bad news for the 22 students left at Ponderosa Elementary School whose parents have been unable to reach them in time to meet an evacuation order that has already morphed and changed far beyond what most of the town’s residents can reasonably be expected to know. The only person between them and oblivion: Kevin’s beleaguered boss Ruby (a stellar Ashlie Atkinson), who has all but given up on Kevin literally this very day, and is stunned when he answers the call to pick up the kids and teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) and take them to what they believe is safety.
As Kevin, a truly reluctant hero who can’t escape his fundamental goodness, attempts to drive the kids and Mary across town, the Camp Fire explodes. Toggling between Martinez and his team (their roiling, makeshift mission control space a nerve-jangling marvel), Kevin and Mary and their motley crew of kids, and the monstrous fire engulfing them all, “The Lost Bus” attempts to juggle both the larger story (this goddamned fire) and smaller examples of the horror and heroism that also took place that day. Subplots are picked up and dropped, including a gutting sequence involving a first responder and the group of citizens he attempts to save, a roving band of looters (looting, pardon our language, fucking what?), and the rattled parents waiting for the kids at a staging location Kevin doesn’t even know exists.
The larger-scale drama is unquestionably effective — what Greengrass and his team of craftsmen and visual artists have been able to do with wind is a miracle, and that’s to say nothing of the fire itself — and so evocative and terrifying that words fail to do it justice. At multiple points during the film, this critic was so struck by the scale, by the sheer viciousness of the fire that I couldn’t help but think, “How the hell did anyone survive this?” Greengrass has always excelled at turning real-life horrors into heart-stopping movies, but this particular vision of Hell on Earth is on another level. It’s as real as it gets.
That Greengrass and Ingelsby would want to zero their focus in more tightly on McKay and Ludwig’s story (producer Jamie Lee Curtis was also a major proponent of centering the film on the story of the bus itself) is understandable enough. For a disaster so vast and so unfathomable, some sort of grounding feels necessary, some little point to hold on to, some faces to remember, but even the actual story of the bus and its temporary inhabitants feels a touch too small for the grand scale Greengrass is working on here. For once, zooming in proves to be prohibitive, only in seeing the scope of this mind-bending tragedy does Greengrass truly find his most important story.
Grade: B
“The Lost Bus” premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Apple Original Films releases it in in select theaters on Friday, September 19, before debuting globally on its streaming platform on Friday, October 3.
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