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One of the most interesting aspects of The Lost Bus is that its music serves as a clear narrative precursor to the score written by Lorne Balfe and Hans Zimmer several years earlier for Ron Howard's documentary, Rebuilding Paradise. The tragedy of that region is represented by music that suffers mightily, with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel. Howard continues that tact in this dramatic thriller, and playing the Balfe and Zimmer score directly after this one would form a seamless overall listening experience for the event and its extended aftermath. The music for The Lost Bus, generally speaking, is growling in its suspense, frantic in its action, and extremely subdued in its drama. The demeanor of the entire approach consistently builds fear and panic until 3:30 into "Escaping Paradise" marks the sudden turn as the bus emerges unexpectedly from the smoke while outrunning the fire. Occasional moments of tonal gravity punctuate the otherwise rhythmically gloomy sense of doom for the whole affair, the listening experience intentionally unpleasant for most of its time. In the picture, the music seems to simply fade away entirely for much of the quiet resolution, and the extremely restrained optimism at the conclusion of "Returning Home" provides no real sense of hope. Instrumentally, Howard starts with mostly synthetics and increases the organic presence as the story progresses. The beginning of the tale emphasizes an obvious representation of electricity from the synthetics (albeit largely removed from the film) and adds the symphonic elements from there. By "Burnout," the string and brass ensemble increasingly augment the synth pulses with effective depth, but never does this score break out into actual action of any attractive quality. Midsection cues like "No Way Out," "Surrounded," and "Fight Fire or Save Lives" offer dull suspense ambience while the remainder pushes the vaguely atonal, groaning tones to higher intensities as needed without much subtly or nuance. Interestingly, fans of action composer Ravi Basrur in India claimed similarities between the early cues in The Lost Bus and the score for Salaar: Part 1 - Ceasefir, but while there are indeed some like-minded techniques at play, the Basrur work is otherwise much more interesting and varied. Angry, propulsive, and droning synth ambience sounds the same in every country.

While Howard's strategy for tackling The Lost Bus addresses the guttural, instinctive dread of the topic quite well, he somehow misses the human element, allowing the music no substantive thematic journey even though the tale is quite compelling. There is very little narrative structure to the score; it just ebbs and flows with its droning and transitions to very minimalistic tonal drama at the end. That theme of resolution applies an elusive melody with no true heart, its solo strings of hazy country feel serving mostly as a stunned reaction to despair rather than an expression of relief for the saved lives of the children on the bus. The idea's slowly rising phrasing serves the suspense portions as a precursor for the actual theme, previewing its drama in the middle of "No One Here" before resorting back to synth rambles and later building into something of an action motif by the height of "Escaping Paradise." For the release of tension, a solo cello plays a fragment at 3:41 into "Escaping Paradise" in a very underplayed moment in the picture. A fuller rendition follows at the outset of "Reunited" on the cello with challenged harmonies and offers a little more warmth in the second minute of the cue despite still sounding bludgeoned. A piano joins two cellos for meandering, moderately tonal expressions of exhaustion thereafter. This material takes a long time to reestablish in "Returning Home," much it a long drone. The cello returns with the melody about three minutes in, and the ascending figures heard throughout the score mature at 4:14 for their muted highlight. A slow heartbeat rhythm over rambling keyboard and strings eventually turns positive for the cue's end, but it's an awfully drab way to close the story. Meanwhile, Howard also employs a danger motif that initially consists of heavily industrial pitch slurring above or below key with a powerful drone underneath. Immediately impactful in "Electrical Hazard," this technique is joined by more organic percussion early in "Embers," transforms into a siren effect by "Burnout," and gains action strength from brass in "Gridlocked." On the whole, The Lost Bus is a movie that didn't really need its score to function during the fire scenes but is sorely lacking the gravity it needs for the resolution. The album runs too long at 64 minutes to sustain itself, most of the work boring you with its predictable ambient dread. The movie's story is extremely compelling as a drama, and there must have been a way to better utilize the original score while remaining respectful of the seriousness of the real-life event.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 82 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.24 (in 89,550 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 64:34