Disaster, personified, proves The Lost Bus‘s best character. In a tick-tock of one harrowing aspect of California’s 2018 Camp Fire, Director Paul Greengrass and cinematographer Pål Ulvik Rokseth cast it as a relentless specter. It roars through trees and over hills, thanks to Oliver Tarney and Rachael Tate’s intense sound design. Driven by wind, it knocks down a transmission line, sparking a fire in the bone-dry brush of Butte County, CA. With frightening speed, it consumes sparsely populated areas, marching towards the town of Paradise. Disaster is anger, snarling, and utterly captivating. Unfortunately, the script by Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby from Lizzie Johnson’s Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire gives Disaster only the thinnest of human characters to play against.

Kevin McKay (Matthew McConaughey) is less a person than a collection of bad news and regrets. In reality, McKay had started driving a bus because of its flexibility. The pay and hours enabled him to take the courses needed to become a full-time teacher. In the world of The Lost Bus, however, he’s aimless. He exists as a breathing warning to his estranged son, Shaun (Levi McConaughey), of the dangers of squandered potential. The change renders McKay a passive plaything of cruel fate as opposed to the seeming reality of being an average man actively pursuing a career change.

The script threatens to bury McConaughey in a series of bruising emotional losses. First, he came back to Paradise because his father, whom he hadn’t spoken to in almost three decades, was dying. Unfortunately, despite driving all night, Kevin didn’t make it in time to say goodbye, never mind find some sort of closure. He’s staying in Paradise because his mother, Sherry (Kay McCabe McConaughey), needs support to stay living at home with her disability. He’s brought his son out with him, but Shaun would rather be back with mom and her new man. He can’t get the overtime he wants, and his boss, Ruby Bishop (Ashlie Atkinson), doesn’t seem especially inclined to change that situation. Oh, and he had to put his dog down.

All of this is before the smoke even starts pouring into the sky. Once that happens, Kevin still has plenty to worry about as he and teacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) mount a quixotic play to get a bus of elementary school children to safety. His son has the flu and needs medicine. Shaun is also calling his mom to complain about Kevin. That could potentially ruin her romantic weekend, which she blames Kevin for. His son won’t answer the phone to discuss any of this. And on it goes.

It’s a lot. McConaughey does his best to find a personality in the mess. He gives Kevin a jittery energy and a constantly frustrated affect that never boils over into him being an outright jerk. The moments he gets to soften to comfort the kids or Mary feel authentic. But there’s not much room for his performance to breathe surrounded by all that trauma.

There also isn’t much room for Ferrera at all. McConaughey is a good scene partner, but the screenplay gives her so little to work. She’s a collection of words like “responsible,” and “mom.” Throwing in a dash of “wishes she traveled more in retrospect” does little to help. Mary’s the second lead, but Atkinson and the consistently excellent utility player, Yul Vazquez as Chief Martinez, feel so much richer on the page, despite significantly less screentime.

These are all problems that quickly fade away as the action sets in. For those inclined not to dig deeper after the credits roll, they may, in fact, never bother. That’s because Greengrass remains an expert at turning up the screws on his characters and his audiences. The Lost Bus quickly becomes the very definition of a movie where you pay for the whole seat but only need the edge. Continuing to step back from the frantic style that characterized his work on the Bourne franchise and other earlier actioners like United 93, he finds a midpoint between those and the erased from collective memory by COVID News of the World. That gives the film a definite sense of geography, making the ceaseless encroachment of flame all the more disorienting and unnerving.

Taken in total, the result is an intense feature that gives the audience a real sense of the terror of witnessing one’s world erased by fire while standing among the flames. It is a shot of adrenaline right to the heart that keeps all but the coolest of cucumbers staring at the screen. However, the film’s postlude reminds the audience that there was little beyond that adrenaline. Given how many lives the Camp Fire upended, The Lost Bus is far too short on human elements. When McConaughey surveys the remains of his childhood home, the audience recognizes how devastating it must be. But they don’t feel it.

The Lost Bus is currently braving a limited theatrical run before evacuating to AppleTV+ on October 3.

The Lost Bus Trailer: