The Lost Bus review: Matthew McConaughey’s wildfire survival story is like watching a panic attack

Paul Greengrass rarely misses.

Before he became a narrative filmmaker, Greengrass worked in journalism as a director for the British current affairs series World in Action.

That grounded realism can be seen in most of his movies, whether it was stories rooted in truth such as United 93, about the hijacked 9/11 plane that crashed into a field after passengers intervened, and Bloody Sunday, based on the 1972 shootings in Derry, or fanciful fiction such his Jason Bourne blockbusters.

With a signature hand-held, almost verité style, his films feel intimate and propulsive, as if you’re right in the middle of it. Which can be pretty stressful given the action-forward subjects of Greengrass’s work (the 2020 historical drama News of the World was a notable exception).

It’s a style that works very well for The Lost Bus. Your heart will literally pound and your brow will perspire as your body viscerally reacts to the tension Greengrass so expertly weaves through the film.

Starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, the film is drawn from the events of the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history. It killed 85 people and destroyed more than 13,000 homes.

The power company whose poorly maintained transmission lines and sparked the fires ultimately paid a $US13.5 billion settlement, although ferocious winds and dry conditions fuelled the catastrophe.

The film only has one line of dialogue that references the wider context of the role of climate change in intensifying fires around the world, when a fire captain, played by Yul Vazquez, tells the assembled media that we’d all be fools if we keep ignoring the fact it’s getting worse and more frequent.

To omit it completely would’ve been a more political choice than having it. But The Lost Bus’s focus is on this one story about driver Kevin McKay, schoolteacher Mary Ludwig, and the 22 primary-school-aged children in their care.

The Lost Bus is a straightforward story. When the Camp Fire broke out in Paradise, California, evacuation orders start to roll out. Bus driver Kevin is on his way back home, in the danger zone, to his teenage son and his wheelchair-bound mum (played by McConaughey’s real-life son, Levi, and mother Kay) when a desperate call goes out over the radio from dispatch.

They need a bus to pick up a class full of kids from one school to another, so they can be met by their parents. He’s the closest and so he agrees. The kids are accompanied by one teacher, Mary (in real life, there was a second teacher but they had declined to be involved with the film).

What should have been a 10-minute ride becomes a perilous journey as the unpredictable and out-of-control fire engulfs swathes of land and communities. Roads are clogged with fleeing and abandoned cars while previously safe passageways turn dangerous in an instant.

Smoke and heat are crushing the kids with some on the verge of collapse while looters with weapons demand the bus.

The film basically does this for more than an hour, an unrelenting panic attack that makes for stressful viewing, but it’s also captivating. Greengrass has this ability of bringing home the immediacy of his characters’ jeopardy.

The film was shot on location in New Mexico, not on a stage, and the scenes on the bus itself are effectively claustrophobic.

The script is tight, co-written between Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby, best known for creating Mare of Easttown, weaving another emotional layer, ably performed by McConaughey and Ferrera, among the demands of what those characters are already facing.

Kevin has a fractious relationship with his son and carries a lot of regrets about his recently deceased father. Making that choice to pick up those kids over going home weighs on him.

While Mary has spent her whole life in Paradise, afraid of what the wider world may hold, and vows that if they survive this, she wants to push against those self-imposed borders.

On the surface, it’s all rote stuff. The difference is how you breathe life into it.

In Greengrass’s hands, The Lost Bus is high-octane action underscored by the intimacy of the human stories that are caught in the whirlwind of these greater disasters.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Lost Bus in streaming on Apple TV+