The Lost Bus
Apple TV+ | Release Date (Streaming): September 19, 2025 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
64
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
14
Mixed:
14
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsSep 17, 2025
Greengrass doesn’t have you squirming in your seat because he’s manufacturing drama but because he knows when to cut, when to slow down, when to fire on all cylinders. This sounds like a science, but it’s actually an art. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriSep 6, 2025
The picture thus combines the excitement of an old-school disaster spectacle with a fly-on-the-wall portrait of institutions struggling to function in the face of a calamity. The effect is singular: We enjoy the thrill ride immensely, but it’s the realism that sticks with us. Movies end, but the fires are here to stay. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 23, 2025
McConaughey and Ferrera prove the most delightful endangered bus companions since Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed, exhibiting just the right balance between tension and comradeship. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenSep 18, 2025
Cinematographer Pal Ulvik Rokseth’s handheld camera work, some really slick editing and canny use of real news footage, combined with impressive CGI, give it all a pulse-raisingly immersive quality, like a plunge into the underworld. Read full review
80
BBCCaryn JamesSep 18, 2025
The Lost Bus doesn't have to bludgeon viewers with a message or with its timely resonance. Greengrass lets us feel it. Read full review
75
USA TodayBrian TruittOct 2, 2025
The Lost Bus is a cathartic quest and character study that works thanks to McConaughey’s steeliness and Greengrass’ ability to put you on the edge of your seat (even if it’s just the couch). Read full review
75
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 2, 2025
McConaughey and Ferrera have chemistry and serve their roles well. The endangered children all start to blur together, though Nathan Gariety stands out as Toby, a scared 7-year-old who bonds with McKay. But you’re not watching “The Lost Bus” for deep characterizations. You’re watching it for the action. On that basis, Greengrass and company deliver the goods. Read full review
75
The Associated PressLindsey BahrSep 17, 2025
The Lost Bus is about a few ordinary people in an impossible situation just trying to survive. While it’s not hard to wring emotion out of an audience watching kids in peril, it also, in some ways, gets right to the very heart of the matter. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 8, 2025
It’s a reminder of how good the director of “United 93” and “Captain Philips” can be at transporting us to unimaginable circumstances, and it plays like a truly phenomenal disaster movie that happens to be true, one of those flicks you almost always watch the last hour of if you catch it on cable. Read full review
75
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 6, 2025
The larger-scale drama is unquestionably effective — what Greengrass and his team of craftsmen and visual artists have been able to do with wind is a miracle, and that’s to say nothing of the fire itself — and so evocative and terrifying that words fail to do it justice. Read full review
70
ColliderNate RichardSep 18, 2025
The Lost Bus may not reach the heights of some of Greengrass' finest work, but that's a high bar to reach. Thanks to some immersive setpieces, grounded performances, and stellar direction, the latest film from Apple TV+ rises above its shortcomings, resulting in a gripping docudrama that is worthy of your time. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubMatt DonatoSep 18, 2025
Without that grandeur—that Hollywood-sheen take on storybook resilience—the film’s uneven application of sad-sack strife might extinguish McConaughey’s guiding performance. But Greengrass’ throwback disaster-movie efforts, plus a healthy fury induced by our harmful ecological footprint, keeps feeding this fire. Read full review
63
Washington PostTy BurrSep 25, 2025
At its best, “The Lost Bus” offers a testament to people’s courage, solo or in groups, when faced with nature’s deadly chaos (albeit a chaos intensified by human-caused climate change). At its worst, it reduces the biggest fire-related calamity in recent memory — 85 deaths, about $16 billion in damage and an area five times the size of San Francisco burned to the ground — to an effective but impersonal disaster movie. Read full review
63
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 8, 2025
What keeps “The Lost Bus” from going full PlayStation — or full Brosnan — is a pulsing performance from McConaughey as a flawed dad desperately trying to reach his ill son (played by McConaughey’s own offspring, Levi Alves McConaughey) while saving the sons and daughters of others. Read full review
60
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsOct 9, 2025
There’s something of a ​‘so what?’ aspect to the film where it all comes down to the thrill of potential escape and, eventually, a whole lot of good luck. Read full review
60
The RevealScott TobiasOct 2, 2025
The film indulges in the Speed-like fantasy that a skilled and intrepid bus driver can blow through the inferno, but that’s Hollywood. The Lost Bus is convincing enough to expose its own nonsense. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleSep 23, 2025
There are scenes of nerve-jangling terror that weld you to your seat, but they’re sandwiched in between a lot that feels very much sculpted for three-act character arc effect by Greengrass and co-writer Brad Ingelsby. Read full review
60
EmpireHelen O'HaraSep 18, 2025
The fire scenes are terrifying and may well sear themselves into your brain, but however well-intentioned, the human element is less involving than the disaster they must endure. Read full review
60
The GuardianBenjamin LeeSep 6, 2025
The writing might be disappointingly inelegant but The Lost Bus is forthright and frightening regardless. Read full review
60
Next Best PictureGiovanni LagoSep 6, 2025
Greengrass can conjure up some magic in those final twenty minutes as The Lost Bus, on all levels, feels like it’s in rhythm. Unfortunately, by the time it does, the film is winding down to its inevitable conclusion. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 6, 2025
The Lost Bus resembles several other Greengrass films in that it’s also slim on character (only one of the kids has a name and personality), but succeeds in plunging audiences into the action — which, in this case, means trying to steer an unwieldy vehicle through hell itself. Read full review
60
Screen DailyRobert DanielsSep 6, 2025
For every moment The Lost Bus impresses with it scale and craft, there are other instances where it feels like we’re watching these screaming kids be dragged through a Disney amusement park ride. Read full review
60
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiSep 6, 2025
There are certainly lulls throughout, and the story needed some tightening. But what it lacks is more than made up with a great cast, distressing moments, and some well-shot action. Read full review
58
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezSep 9, 2025
Both McConaughey and Ferrera’s characters embody the idea of an everyday hero: perhaps imperfect but unselfishly stepping up to help others in a time of crisis. While the movie’s artifice makes it a thrilling watch, its real-life inspiration is equally just as moving. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMichael OrdoñaSep 22, 2025
The narrative is hamstrung by cliché attempts to build McKay’s backstory, shamelessly changing key facts. McConaughey’s performance is just fine, as is Ferrera’s, but the personal stuff feels like a distraction. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithSep 19, 2025
The film is plagued by flaws: James Newton Howard’s relentlessly bombastic musical score, an elementary storyline, underwritten characters. As expertly as Mr. Greengrass recaptures the flaming horrors, his film is a somewhat superfluous successor to an excellent documentary on the same subject, Ron Howard’s 2020 feature “Rebuilding Paradise.” Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisSep 18, 2025
Greengrass knows how to shoot and cut, but The Lost Bus is at once too high-minded and too exploitative to work. However skilled the cinematography and editing, there is no saving a movie predicated on looming death with badly written characters and such a frustratingly narrow point of view. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineMark HansonSep 8, 2025
Paul Greengrass employs a peripatetic restlessness to the material, and while that brings an often thrilling sense of verisimilitude to the film, the cliché-stuffed screenplay too often plays against the intended solemnity of the project. Read full review
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