Turbulence Movie Review – Takes To The Skies In A Routine But Decent Airborne Riff On Fall

This single-location thriller occupies its own niche of action and horror, confining characters into an isolated setting in which they are forced to fight for their lives. A gradually evolving and increasingly compelling offshoot of that sub-genre is one focused on stranding a movie’s protagonists thousands of feet in the air with the simple goal of a safe descent. 2022’s spine-tingling Fall arguably kick-started the trend, but Claudio Fäh’s Turbulence pushes the concept even higher — stranding its characters in a hot-air balloon with mostly effective results, even if the film’s hit-or-miss green-screen effects could’ve used a bit more polish.

Turbulence begins with businessman Zach (Jeremy Irvine), whose recent slew of company lay-offs prompts one of his former employees to take his own life in front of him. A subsequent attempt to collect himself at a hotel bar leads to the married Zach having a flirtatious happy hour with a woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko), to whom Zach confides his recent marital troubles. Amid Julia’s attempts at blackmail, Zach permits her to accompany him and his wife Emmy (Hera Hilmar) on their trip to the Italian Dolomites in a hot air balloon, piloted by the cheerful veteran Harry (Kelsey Grammer). Unfortunately, the unstable Julia swiftly causes friction on the flight, and eventually causes serious technical damage to the balloon’s navigational tools, leaving the trio floating aimlessly through the sky as they try to find a means to safely bring the balloon down.

Turbulence builds a great feeling of both claustrophobia and tension in the increasingly volatile three-way personality conflict of Zach, Julia, and Emmy that culminates in their dire predicament. On the score of the sheer height of the story, Turbulence is a bit of a mixed bag, with much of the scenery realized (admittedly by obvious necessity) through green-screen work that often varies significantly in believability. Moreover, the contrast of genuinely gorgeous real-world mountaintop scenery is interwoven in the balloon’s wild flight. The combination of realism and camera magic in the creation of the setting of Turbulence ultimately makes the exteriors of the balloon itself an unevenly realized element of the movie.

What Turbulence lacks in the effects department, however, it makes up for in Fäh’s skill at drilling home the terrifying stakes and vast gulf of the sky beneath the protagonists, ever threatening to pull them to their doom. Early on, a rope that is necessary to control the balloon’s height is made inaccessible by Julia’s crazed outburst, forcing the characters to devise ways to literally stand on their tiptoes on the ledge of the basket to reach it. Spoiler warning – this set-up also facilitates the most visceral demise in the movie, plunging one of the quartet literally 15,000 feet to a splatterly end right out of a Final Destination movie.

While the four protagonists in the balloon are most stock characters, the cast keep the journey of Turbulence engaging with each as a vector of a different emotional angle. Olga Kurylenko is a real stand-out as the unhinged Julia, on fire (at times literally) with her unhealthy attachment to Zach, while Hera Hilmer’s Emmy personifies the determination and survival instinct of the movie’s tale.

Turbulence gets the job done as a single-location survival thriller with palpable tension and a genuinely chilling emphasis on the heights our characters rise to. Despite some iffy green-screen work, Claudio Fäh’s direction keeps viewers on pins and needles in an adventure to the top of the world. With single-location thrillers taking to the air at increasingly terrifying heights, hopefully, Turbulence helps propel the growing sub-genre’s momentum further into the stratosphere.

Turbulence is now playing in select theaters and is available on VOD platforms.

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