Disasters, whether natural, manmade or a combination of both, produce, if not always outright villains (though there are often plenty of those), many people who don't do the right thing.
But they also produce people who do the right thing. Two of those are at the center of the Apple TV movie The Lost Bus.
It's inspired by the 2018 Camp Fire, which wiped out the mountain town of Paradise, California -- among others -- and the story of a bus driver who braved smoke and flame to get 22 schoolchildren out of the inferno.
In the end, the Camp Fire caused 85 fatalities, displaced more than 50,000 people, and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, causing an estimated $16.5B in damage.
Briefly released to theaters in September, The Lost Bus stars Matthew McConaughey as troubled schoolbus driver Kevin McKay, and America Ferrara as Mary Ludwig, a caring teacher who accompanies him on the harrowing drive.
The director is action-film veteran Paul Greengrass (United 93, Jason Bourne movies). Writers are Paul Inglesby (Mare of Easttown), Greengrass, and journalist Lizzie Johnson, author of Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire.
There have been documentaries about the Camp Fire, including two called Fire in Paradise (one on Netflix, and one that was part of PBS' Frontline); Bring Your Own Brigade, available on Paramount+; and Ron Howard's National Geographic film Rebuilding Paradise, available on Disney+.
The Lost Bus is the first scripted film about the disaster, and it premiered just months after similar wildfires leveled the Los Angeles-area communities of Altadena, Pacific Palisades, and Malibu.
Along with those directly affected by the fires, many L.A. residents saw and smelled flames and smoke, know one or more people impacted, and lived through days of continuous news coverage, with thousands worrying that their neighborhood would be next.
The Lost Bus captures the ferocity of the fire, and the fear it engendered, as parched conditions and whipping winds turn sparks from electrical equipment into a miles-wide wall of raging flames.
I live about 10 miles from the Palisades fire, and I still cringed while watching The Lost Bus. It's impossible to imagine what first responders, and the displaced survivors of Paradise and its surrounding towns -- and later, Maui's Lahaina Town, Altadena, Palisades, and Malibu -- felt during the fires and now, in the aftermath.
But, what The Lost Bus does is provide one compelling, well-crafted story of how ordinary people, even children, found the courage to endure the terror and press on to safety.
Mary Ludwig is featured in Netflix's Fire in Paradise, and she talks about how she and the children prayed on the bus. It's a perfectly normal reaction to danger, and yet, The Lost Bus contains no reference to faith and no visible prayer.
It's a strange choice, but it's one of the few flaws (along with some soapy details and artistic license) in an otherwise gripping film.
(If you've seen the 1994 Keanu Reeves/Sandra Bullock film Speed, you may get a flashback or two, whether intentional or not on the part of the filmmakers.)
Family Theater Productions producer-at-large Father Vince Kuna, C.S.C., and I watched The Lost Bus together, and I sent him a few questions about what he saw in the film.
I would argue that as tragic as the events were in the 2018 Paradise fire, the timeline of the fire fits a two-hour-plus movie. The real fire from its ignition to the beginning of containment exploded in three hours.
So, what we have in Paul Greengrass’s depiction is a near real-time unfolding of the wildfire. What the story chose to encapsulate in a postscript was the liability of the electric company, PG&E. Lizzie Johnson reports those legal proceedings in the second half of her book.
We see the differences between the characters and in a deeper way, the genders. Bus driver Kevin is very rational, trying to extradite the students from their school as the fire approaches. His hasty and efficient way about things might unnerve the students.
Mary provides a peaceful presence as the teacher of the students, and they proceed to the bus with emotional stability. This complementary dynamic is heightened in the culminating scene when Kevin boldly speeds through the fire, and Mary tries her best to calm the frightened children.
This was the one and only disappointing aspect in the film. In the book, there’s a chapter entitled “there’s no atheists in fox holes.” Johnson details Paradise as a faith-filled forest town.
And if anyone wavered in the faith previously, this unfortunate crisis nevertheless revealed inherent faith in nearly everyone. It would have been rather easy to depict characters with faith, so I’m not sure why it was intentionally neglected.
The aforementioned actions of the bus driver and teacher, sacrificing of themselves for the sake of the children was an obvious faith-related theme.
Yes, we were under voluntary evacuation in Santa Monica during the recent Palisades fire. In my ministry, wildfires seem to find me.
In my first placement as a priest, we went through the Waldo Canyon Fire (2012) in Cascade, Colorado. The novitiate property was quickly evacuated as the fire came within one hundred yards of our property.
The novices and the priest and brother staff escaped the fires and nestled into our small rectory in the parish. I don’t scare easily, but can admit I was definitely fearful during the first days of the fire.
So, I established in the previous question that I was scared at the outset of the Waldo Canyon Fire. Faith opposes fear.
Being surrounded by a community of faith, especially religious seminarians, brother and priests whose professional capacity is to have profound faith helped me overcome that fear.
Even though it was one of the most trying moments of my life, it was also one of the most faith-filled weeks of my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The fire scenes in this movie are incredibly stressful and intense. It served as a bit of PTSD for me, given the amount of realism depicted. You must go into it as a faithful and hopeful person to overcome the intensity.
Yes. There’s some language, understandable given the context of the event. I would recommend it for teenagers and above. I think the intensity of the fire scenes would be the gauge.
The last thing I will mention is the incredible camera work of the film. You get POV shots from the fire’s perspective, creating the sensation that the fire is a real, organic creature, which of course, it’s not. But that adds to the horror element, where only faith will overcome fear.
Along with Father Vince, Father Edward Looney, who frequently comments on film and TV, also offered a positive review:
Image: ©2025 Netflix
Click here to visit Father Vince Kuna’s IMDB page.
Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.
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