McConaughey's 'The Lost Bus' on Apple TV+ Is Better than You Might Think

I didn’t think there could be much to Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera’s The Lost Bus, mostly because it was released straight to Apple TV+, whose track record with movies is about as abysmal as its record with television series is good. Also, how do you make an interesting two-hour movie about a guy driving a bus full of kids through a fire-ravaged town?

Apparently, the answer is: hire Paul Greengrass as the director. Greengrass’s signature shaky cam might have fallen out of favor after three Bourne movies and his 9/11 film United 93, but it’s well suited to the chaos of driving through fire. The fact that I had no idea what the hell was going on for much of the film is probably the point: neither did bus driver Kevin McKay (McConaughey) or school teacher Mary Ludwig (Ferrera) as they tried to navigate a school bus through a deadly fire that would eventually consume 153,336 acres, displace 50,000 people, and leave 85 dead. (The movie is based on a true story set during 2018’s Camp Fire in Northern California.)

There’s not much of a plot to The Lost Bus, and what little there is isn’t that compelling. McKay is a struggling bus driver who recently returned to his hometown to care for his mother after the death of his estranged father. McKay isn’t much of a father himself — or a husband, for that matter (he spends most of his time on his ex-wife’s shit list). He’s broke, stuck in a dead-end job, and his kid (played by McConaughey’s real-life teenage son) hates him for raising him in a lousy home environment.

It seems like Kevin isn’t that great at his job, either. His bus is overdue for repairs, he’s always late, and his boss, Ruby (Ashlie Atkinson), isn’t eager to give him extra shifts. But when a fire begins to spread across his town and 22 kids are stranded at an elementary school, Kevin reluctantly agrees to pick them up and drive them to a shelter across town, mostly because no one else can.

And so begins a surprisingly harrowing, intense ride through the deadliest fire in California history, with 22 terrified elementary school kids witnessing horrors outside their bus windows. Their teacher, Mary, joins the ride to help keep the kids calm, though she can barely keep herself together amid the chaos.

I don’t know that I gained much from watching the film beyond even more respect for firefighters, teachers, and bus drivers, the latter two of whom deal with enough even when there isn’t a fire to contend with. But the journey through the smoke and flames is a real white-knuckler. I may have let out an involuntary yip or two while watching. I don’t know that I “enjoyed” it, but it’s well done, and it’s definitely the kind of movie that sends you to Wikipedia afterward to learn more about the fire’s destruction. I do suspect, though, that the film would play even better on a big screen, although the violent shaky cam might leave a few stomachs unsettled.

‘The Lost Bus’ is currently streaming on Apple TV+