‘Turbulence’ Review: A B-Movie That Never Takes Off

Throughout film history, so-called B-movies—shot on shoestring budgets and built around the most commercial formulas imaginable—have occasionally delivered genuine surprises, proving that ingenuity can go a long way when resources are scarce. This is not one of those cases. Directed by Swiss filmmaker Claudio Fäh and starring the kind of international cast once associated with the old “direct-to-video” label, Turbulence tells the sort of story that, in better hands, might have turned into a scrappy, low-budget genre classic. For a while, its first half even hints at that possibility, suggesting that a bit of cleverness might carry it through. Don’t get your hopes up. It falls apart as quickly as it takes off.

The film opens like a corporate drama. Zach (Jeremy Irvine, from War Horse) is a millionaire CEO who has just laid off a large number of employees. In a tense opening scene, he’s confronted by one of them—a man fired after decades on the job—who pulls a gun on him during a social event and ultimately shoots himself in the head. Not long after, a shaken Zach is preparing to reunite with his wife in northern Italy, where they plan to spend a few days recovering from the grief of losing a baby. A few nights before that reunion, he encounters a seductive woman named Julia (the former Bond girl Olga Kurylenko) at a Zurich hotel. She tries to spend the night with him; he repeatedly refuses.

Once in the Dolomites with his wife Emmy (Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar), Zach begins receiving messages from Julia, who threatens to tell Emmy everything—unless he transfers €500,000. Zach denies anything happened, claims not to know her, and threatens legal action. What he doesn’t expect is that, when the couple finally embark on their long-planned hot air balloon ride, the third passenger joining them will be Julia herself—whom Zach pretends not to recognize. The trio, accompanied by an American pilot-guide named Harry (veteran Kelsey Grammer, of Frasier), takes to the skies. And it’s clear things won’t end well.

Up to that point, Turbulence—despite its odd coproduction feel and a cast that seems pulled from four different movies—manages to generate a certain intrigue and tension. What could happen inside that balloon, where the air already feels thin enough to cut with a knife? What really happened that night in the hotel? And what role does the eccentric guide play? Once airborne, the film throws everything it can into the mix: interpersonal conflict, extreme weather, and a series of disasters largely caused by the characters themselves within that cramped space. But little by little, credibility erodes, and the whole thing drifts into increasingly absurd territory. It eventually becomes so ridiculous that you may find yourself laughing instead of gripping your seat—or perversely enjoying it for just how far off the rails it goes.

It’s not an easy setup. The moment the balloon lifts off, it’s obvious the actors are confined to a tiny physical set, composited—via rather unconvincing visual effects—over images of the Italian Alps. Sustaining a feature-length drama that blends a love triangle, a corporate thriller, and a survival movie within roughly ten square feet and just four actors is no small feat. Andy Mayson’s script (he’s also the film’s producer) throws in a few supposed twists to keep things moving, but it doesn’t hold together for long. Eventually, the story feels like it’s being held together with duct tape.

Small-scale thrillers have often thrived on exactly this kind of confined-space tension, but Fäh lacks the craft to pull it off. At first glance, you might think he’s aiming for something akin to Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water (1962), or to films built on similar premises like Dead Calm (1989) with Nicole Kidman, The River Wild (1994) with Meryl Streep, or even Cape Fear in either of its versions. But the plot quickly runs out of fresh ideas, the characters never become particularly engaging, and both the suspense and action sequences veer dangerously close to self-parody.

Turbulence is the kind of film that lands in local theaters somewhat inexplicably when, at best, it feels like bottom-of-the-barrel streaming filler.