‘The Lost Bus’ Review: Paul Greengrass and Company are Running on Empty in Undercooked True Life Survival Drama [D] TIFF
Earlier this year, the Los Angeles metropolitan area and San Diego County faced some of the worst wildfires in the country’s history. Complete sections of the greater LA area were engulfed with fire and left in ash as people fled their homes looking for shelter, leaving behind all they knew so they could have a small chance to escape and start over again once the dust had settled. As a visitor at the time of the fire, it was completely heartbreaking to see the panic and fear a vibrant city and its community can have when facing something as dangerous as this, as the fires raged on for several days, leaving a thick cloud of smoke in there, covering the sunlight during most of the day. It’s not a new thing for The Golden State, as this is sadly something the citizens of California have to face on a yearly basis, though not as severe as the one from this past January. In Paul Greengrass’ latest, The Lost Bus, we take a trip back in time to 2018, where the city of Paradise, California, located in the Sierra Nevada foothills about the northwestern Sacramento Valley,faced a similar natural, forest fire event that became the deadliest, most devastating fires in the state’s history. But instead of this film being an ode to the people we lost, both in the past or present, Greengrass and his team have made a Roland Emmerich-esque disaster movie with thinly developed characters, horrid CGI, and with any sense of thematic, emotional purpose to why it was made whatsoever.
We begin on November 8, 2018, and it’s a normal day in Paradise as kids are going to school, parents are heading to work, and everyone else is going about their business on a beautiful week day. As kids are being dropped off from school, bus driver Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) is having a personal crisis back at home. He’s recently had to move back into his family home to take care of his mother (Kay McCabe McConaughey, the actor’s real mother) as her health has been declining since Kevin’s father passed away. Mix in the fact that he is also newly divorced, barely can make hours at his job with the school district as a bus driver, and his son Shaun (Levi McConaughey, yes, his real life son; nepotism running wild in this movie) has moved in with him, even though he doesn’t want to be there his Dad, mirroring Kevin’s relationship with his late parent. Things are spiraling for Kevin, and what’s even worse for him is the clunky dialogue the McConaughey’s are given within the lackluster script from Greengrass and his co-writer Brad Ingelsby, where every trope of a disgruntled, separated family is thrown in a single scene about how life could’ve been better for Kevin if he went to school instead of knocking up his high school girlfriend, cutting to Shaun taking it as he doesn’t want him as a son, leading to both of them yelling at each other, and ending with Shawn saying he hates his father (bland, generic writing meeting wooden acting; would hate to see how the McConaughey’s fight in real life). In an attempt to get us to connect to our main protagonist driver of the titular bus, they miss the mark of making anything memorable happen with the McKay family, making any reunion during or at the end of the film’s events feel worthless.
Kevin’s just started this bus driver gig, and because of family issues, he’s inconsistent in the eyes of his boss Ruby (Ashlie Atkinson), the bus depot dispatcher. When Kevin’s mom calls him about Shaun being sick with a stomach bug, Kevin ignores Ruby’s request to get the bus back to the station for a maintenance check, causing him to fall behind on his day. But that ends up being a blessing in disguise, as Kevin’s bus becomes the last and only bus that can pick up 23 kids at a local elementary once the city has gone into full evacuation mode. As we see Kevin’s family life unfold like a bad afterschool special, a gust of wind (looking like a heavier CGI version of what happens in The Happening) knocks the lines off a power grid in the hills outside of Paradise, causing a fire to build quickly in the surrounding areas. Called to the scene is Cal Fire battalion chief Ray Martinez (Yul Vazquez) and his team of firefighters who are tasked to stop the fires from breaking out further, but no matter what they do, the problem continues to build and build to the point where it is knocking on the doorstep of Paradise, that contains a population of nearly 27,000 people (which has dropped significantly since the events depicted in the film). Greengrass’ signature frantic camera work known from the Bourne franchise and United 93 are on full display as the director is at his best with a fact based exploration of what Martinez and his team, along with the national guard, are going to do to get this fire under control, and if they can’t try to save as many lives as possible. This is where the film works best, in the tense conversations to get the job done, rather than the melodrama found at the heart of this story.
When the evacuation notice comes in, Ruby sends all of her drivers to pick up various students at schools throughout the area to get them to a safe zone to reconnect with their parents. Being the only bus left with enough space for the remaining 23 kids, Kevin reluctantly (wanting to get home to his family) takes on the assignment and rushes over to the local elementary school to get the children, but isn’t going alone, as he drags Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera), a new teacher at the school, with him to help take care of the children. Kevin and Mary, nervous about the fire and other dangers that present themselves along the way, slowly form their own version of a close bond as their mission is to somehow find a way to the shelter where they can reunite the children with their parents. From here on out, Greengrass’ movie becomes a modern day The Towering Inferno on wheels, with some of the most ridiculous dialogue about Kevin and Mary arguing about which road to take to the shelter “whatever you say, Teach,” the ugly CGI fire effects popping up like a bad theme park ride scare when all things become calm for a second, to a truly hilarious scene involving Mary running with a half case of water like she’s one of the kids in Weapons; which is not something you are supposed to be thinking about when you are watching a film like this.
The main issue with The Lost Bus lies in both the lack of suspense and lack of heart put into this project. It’s one of the most horrific, deadly fires in recent US history and yet the drama in this film plays more like a TNT original movie that dads across the country will watch on TV and not on the big screen. Greengrass, an Oscar nominated, celebrated director, brings nothing to this film, and has fully lost any of the prestige that his project is trying to convey. Given its over two-hour runtime, it’s bloated with so much cringe dialogue and trashy CGI, it’s hard to tell if this film is meant to be an inspiring tale of survival or an action film that uses real people and their stories to cheaply get you to buy into the overall spectacle that Greengrass has assembled. Producers Jamie Lee Curtis and Jason Blum both recently affected by the fires in LA and put their name on this project (there isn’t a talk show or red carpet JLC hasn’t mentioned losing her home in the last nine months), but even their passion as native Californians, who understand the emotional devastation a tragedy like this can have on their community, couldn’t help their director land the right tone to make any of this film actually matter.
The Lost Bus is a complete disaster in not just the events we see on screen, but in almost every aspect as a film. McConaughey, Ferrera, and the rest of the cast are mostly sleepwalking through their performances, with not a single one of the child actors standing out within a movie that is mainly about these children and saving their lives. The action set pieces are repetitive, filled with annoyingly loud moments of suspense-less drama with the background noise of the kids just screaming about the fire (like come on kids, you know you’re in a tense situation with Mr. “Alright Alright Alright” driving your bus. You can’t be too surprised when things go wrong every five minutes.) Even the score from James Newton Howard is a bland imitation of music we’ve heard from him before within his body of work, and again, is another empty vessel of ideas used within Greengrass’ failed exercise. If the filmmakers really wanted to honor the victims of Paradise, they should’ve just donated the budget and salaries involved with The Lost Bus to the families or victim’s funds for those effected by the LA fires earlier this year because this movie is an embarrassing showcase of how someone can put very little effort into honoring a community’s story.
Grade: D
This review is from the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival where The Lost Bus had its world premiere. Apple Original Films will release the film in U.S. theaters on September 19 and on Apple TV+ October 3.
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