Is The Lost Bus a True Story? The Truth Behind Matthew McConaughey's Gripping Thriller

Here we go: The Lost Bus is a survival thriller built on a real nightmare — the 2018 Camp Fire — and it absolutely leans into the thriller part. It stars Matthew McConaughey as Kevin, a school-bus driver in Butte County trying to get 22 kids and a teacher out while the fire roars through town. The backbone is true. A lot of the rest? Movie magic, for better and worse.

What the movie changes (and what actually happened)

• The movie gives Kevin a personal ticking clock: a teenage son supposedly stranded in Magalia. In reality, per a 2018 CNN report, the real Kevin McKay said his family had already been picked up and was safe at an evacuation site in Chico before he went back for the kids.
• There are looters with guns on the freeway trying to board the bus. That did not happen. That’s Paul Greengrass punching up the suspense.
• On screen, Kevin takes backroads to outsmart gridlock. In real life, when he tried that, authorities turned him around.
• The movie toys with the idea of waiting out the fire in the roadway. In reality, that’s not how this worked. Reports suggest the bus was stuck in brutal, bumper-to-bumper traffic for roughly 30 miles — a slog that stretched to about five hours.
• The film pushes a total comms blackout to justify the title The Lost Bus. In truth, while radio chatter was a mess, there were bits of contact through cell phones. The bus wasn’t truly “lost.”

What is faithful: Kevin McKay did load up 22 kids and an elementary teacher and got them out. He also picked up a 20-year-old preschool teacher along the way. The heroism is real; the embellishments are there to keep your pulse up.

Greengrass turns fire into a character

Director Paul Greengrass and cinematographer Pal Ulvik Rokseth shoot the blaze like it’s hunting people — flames threading across dry brush, the wind whipping it forward — and it’s very intentionally Jaws-coded. Greengrass told Time he wanted the fire to feel like a predator. His own words:

I remember saying to my long-time editor Goldenberg, 'This film needs the shark. We need to personify the fires like the shark in Jaws'. That's why I created those shots of the fire moving. So you felt its voracious appetite and then its insidious character at the end when they get trapped.

It’s a little inside baseball, but the approach works on screen — those creeping, hungry-fire shots do a lot of the movie’s heavy lifting.

The movie vs the numbers

Greengrass is at the helm, with McConaughey leading a cast that also includes America Ferrera and Yul Vazquez. Apple Studios backed it, it hit in 2025, and it had a limited theatrical run before heading to streaming. The reception is... interesting. IMDb has it at 7.2/10, while Rotten Tomatoes is sitting at 8%. That gap is a choice. Still, as a lean disaster thriller, it plays like awards-season bait; if the limited run satisfies eligibility rules, don’t be shocked if it gets whispered about for the 2026 Oscars.

Bottom line: The real story didn’t need the extra chaos, but the movie adds it anyway — and as a tense, audience-gripping ride, it works.

The Lost Bus is now streaming on Apple TV+ in the U.S.