The Lost Bus (2025)

I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that this movie was nominated in the area of special effects for the 2026 Academy Awards and it certainly fits that bill. It is a "telling the story of a disaster" movie, which adheres largely to the facts even if some of the people and their circumstances are changed. This is about the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, which went from a small fire to a devestating fire in no time at all, aided and abetted by dry conditions and very high wind. Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) is a relatively new school bus driver, back in Paradise for a number of reasons and struggling. He answers a call from his dispatcher to pick up 23 kids at an elementary school and get them to safety. At first, it doesn’t seem that difficult, but everyone in the area of Paradise, California, underestimated how quickly this blaze would move and how hard it would be to evacuate as it did. Stuck in traffic with enough smoke in the air to block the sun, Kevin and a teacher named Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) do their best to keep the kids calm, even as their own panic rises. Cutting through traffic, trying shortcuts, and blocking the children from seeing people literally on fire. The actual action of is white-knuckle riveting. It’s powerfully immersive stuff, so much so that while there isn’t a bus of children actually avoiding a deadly blaze, the viewer gets so caught up in the immediacy of what they are facing that it is hard to watch and hard to look away. There’s a scene where Mary actually gets off the bus to find water that will had me wanting to yell at her to get back to the bus--NOW. THe bad news is that the beginning of the movie is completely unnecessary and clunky. We do not need to know Kevin's backstory to care about whether he gets these kids, himslef and the teacher to safety. Instead of glossing over that we spend quite a bit of time learning Kevin recently underwent a bitter divorce, his teenage son hates him, his mother is cognitively declining, and icing on the life stressor cake, his dog died. Ugh, really? Maybe it even describes the real story but wow, not needed. Overall this was a good edge of your seat action movie, and if you haven't seen it, you should watch the short documentary, Campfire, which shows actual footage of the Camp Fire and how it unfolded in real life to see just hoe true to form this rendition is.