The Lost Bus recounts the true story of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, following a school bus driver and a teacher as they lead 22 children through gridlocked roads, suffocating smoke, and advancing flames. Based on Lizzie Johnson’s nonfiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, the film tracks their desperate attempt to navigate a collapsing community, capturing both the chaos outside the bus and the mounting fear within.

Director Paul Greengrass deserves credit for vividly portraying the chaos and trauma of a disaster on an almost unimaginable scale. The emotional weight on the audience is immense, and it’s hard to fathom the devastation experienced by those who actually lived through these events. Having tackled similarly harrowing stories in United 93 and Captain Phillips, Greengrass again demonstrates the sensitivity required to depict such a catastrophic disaster.

Visually, the film can be difficult to follow at times. The shaky-cam approach, intended to convey the fire’s chaos, occasionally makes it hard to fully grasp what’s happening, while some of the CGI struggles to convincingly depict the fire’s impact on towns and neighborhoods.

The performances across the board deserve immense credit, particularly the child actors, whose fear and panic are convincingly conveyed throughout the entire harrowing bus ride. Matthew McConaughey as Kevin McKay and America Ferrera as teacher Mary Ludwig also deliver strong performances, adding both realism and emotional depth to the film.

There’s also the seemingly unnecessary subplot of McKay’s family drama, which could have been omitted without affecting the main storyline, helping to trim some of the excess from an otherwise slightly bloated runtime.

It’s a shame that a movie of this magnitude was released straight to Apple TV. The Lost Bus deserved a theatrical release, as a film of this scale truly benefits from the biggest screen possible. Recent successes like F1 and the short theatrical run of K-Pop: Demon Hunters show there was no reason this film couldn’t have received the same treatment.