The Lost Bus (2025) ‘TIFF’ Movie Review: Matthew McConnaughey Stuns in Another Visceral If Rudimentary Showing of Communal Resilience From Paul Greengrass

Paul Greengrass has never been one to let the recency of tragedy prevent him from viscerally recreating it in the name of tributing resilience; some have thus argued that the British filmmaker’s approach to deadly disasters is somewhat tasteless in its invocation of trauma so soon after the fact. There is, however, the parallel argument that Greengrass opts for these continued brushes with controversy precisely because reliving these horrors is just a first step to strengthening the communal bonds that would presumably bring us together in the face of future hardship.

All this is to say that “The Lost Bus” likely wasn’t timed for release in the wake of the recent 2025 LA wildfires that destroyed so many homes and took so many lives, but in setting his sights towards the flames that negligent powers continue to feed, Greengrass’ particular brand of rousing Good Samaritan heroics may be just what some are looking for in the face of a pessimistic worldview spreading so indiscriminately.

This time, the director’s chosen Good Samaritan comes in the form of Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey, hitting the gas full-throttle), a down-and-out divorcee whose personal hardships almost border on parody. His estranged father recently died and left him with a pile of medical bills he can’t afford, his mother is battling cancer, his son wishes he were dead, and he has to put down his beloved dog… and this is all established in less than 10 minutes of runtime!

Circumstances have consequently led McKay to return to his hometown of Paradise, California to make ends meet behind the wheel of a school bus, which proves an unexpected danger in November of 2018 when the notorious Camp Fires spread well beyond control. With no one around to pick up a group of schoolchildren stranded at a school in the hills and bring them to a safe checkpoint, McKay shifts into gear at the prospect of some divine second chance.

If Greengrass’ trademark shaky-cam—a staple of the film from its earliest moments— doesn’t drum up any nausea, then Brad Ingelsby’s rote characterization is likely to do the trick. McKay’s particular register of personal failure is projected at every turn like an emergency sign so bright it shines through all manner of smoke and smog; nearly every interaction with another character for the first hour involves some lecture about how his life is a complete mess and he’s become isolated from everyone around him.

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But if Ingelsby’s hackneyed writing proves to be laying everything on way too thick, then McConaughey is putting in every ounce of effort he can muster to make it all go down organically. Given his own recent brushes with preventable tragedy—it wasn’t that long ago that the 2022 mass shooting in his hometown of Uvalde, Texas led to a passionate and infuriated call to concrete action that continues to fall on deaf ears—McConaughey clearly feels every ounce of urgency in a role like this right down to his bones, and it shows.

Few actors have managed to bring so much pained gravity to a role performance latched almost entirely to a bus driver’s seat, but McConaughey is carrying so much weight in the bags under his eyes that it’s a wonder the 35,000 lbs bus can move at all. It’s for this very reason that “The Lost Bus” never chokes under its oppressive cloud of ember and brimstone, despite Greengrass’ best efforts to turn this disaster into a spectacle.

Perhaps that isn’t entirely fair, as “The Lost Bus” only utilizes its widespread fire effects—worth commending in themselves given the notorious difficulty in making fire look realistic, let alone making that visual the enveloping threat of your entire two-hour film—as a means of conveying the communal stakes in the deadliest offshoot of an all-too-common occurrence. These efforts may prove inadvertently sinister coming from the same man who made a 9/11 highjacking film in 2006 or a 2011 Utøya shooting recreation just seven years after the fact, but Paul Greengrass’ journalistic roots never let his films totally drown in the secretions of his ever-bleeding heart.

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The Lost Bus (2025) Movie Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
The Lost Bus (2025) Movie Cast: Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera, Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson.
The Lost Bus (2025) In Theaters on Fri Sep 19, Runtime: 2h 9m, Genre: Mystery & Thriller/Drama

Where to watch The Lost Bus `