December 23, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Claudio Fäh
Culture Representation: Taking place in northeastern Italy, the action film “Turbulence” features an all-white cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An affluent married couple experience terror when they are trapped on a hot air balloon with a woman who wants to get revenge on the husband.
Culture Audience: “Turbulence” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching stupid and unrealistic action movies.
The aptly titled, awful action flick “Turbulence” is a rough watch. Even by low-budget schlock standards, Turbulence looks too fake in this poorly made, terribly acted story about a married couple experiencing terror on a hot air balloon. “Turbulence” has such unrealistic physics for this hot air balloon ride from hell, the movie should be classified as a science fiction film.
Directed by in Claudio Fäh and written by Andy Mayson (who is one of the movie’s producers), “Turbulence” takes place in northeastern Italy but was actually filmed in Zurich, Switzerland. The movie has a very small number of people in its cast but a large number of cringeworthy scenes. Parts of the movie that should be suspenseful are instead laughable because of all the ridiculousness on display.
“Turbulence” begins by showing the CEO of a company called Krieger signing off on several employee layoffs for the company. The CEO is an American named Zach (played by Jeremy Irvine), who is in his 30s, and it’s revealed later in the movie that he inherited the company from his father. The movie never states what type of industry Krieger is in, but it’s a very wealthy company.
The next scene shows Krieger having a company party in a conference room. Zach is one of the people in attendance. Suddenly, a man in his late 60s named Jens Fischer (played by Peter Gantzler) bursts into the room. Jens is one of the people who was laid off, and he’s very angry about it.
Jens pulls out a gun and confronts Zach by pointing a gun at Zach and shouting that he gave his life for the company. Zach begs Jens not to shoot him. Zach explains that he and his wife have been trying to have a child, but she recently had a miscarriage. Jens pulls the trigger, but he doesn’t shoot Zach. Jens shoots and kills himself, resulting in Zach being splattered with Jens’ blood.
After this shocking incident, Zach calls his wife Emmy (played by Hera Hilmar), who is at their home in Los Angeles. The first indication that “Turbulence” is horribly written is that Zach doesn’t tell Emmy what happened with a laid-off employee commiting suicide in front of Zach. Instead, Zach acts like nothing is wrong and tells Emmy that he can’t wait to see her. Emmy will be arriving in Italy to meet up with Zach for their postponed honeymoon.
On the night of this suicide, before Emmy arrives in Italy, Zach goes to a hotel bar, where he meets a flirtatious stranger named Julia (played by Olga Kurylenko), who makes a scene at the bar. Julia had asked the bartender (played by Alessandro De Cominato) for an olive, but the bartender told her that in order to get an olive from the bar, she had to order a drink first. Julia refused and started arguing with the bartender.
In order to stop the argument, Zach (who was sitting nearby) offered to buy Julia a drink. Julia and Zach begin chatting. He tells her that he’s waiting for his wife Emmy to eventually arrive in Italy for their delayed honeymoon. Julia seems curious to know more about the spouses’ relationship, but Zach doesn’t reveal any of the marital problems that he and Emmy have been having recently.
Instead, Zach tells Julia that he’s happily married, as a way to tell Julia that he thinks she’s trying to seduce him. Julia laughs in response and says, “Don’t be so presumptuous.” Zach also mentions that he and Emmy are going to spend a few days in the Dolemites, where they plan to take a hot air balloon ride.
The next day, Zach gets text messages from Julia, who demands €500,000 to buy her silence about what they did the night before. Zach thinks it’s a joke at first, but she persists. Zach texts her back to say that they didn’t do anything wrong. Zach’s last text to Julia says, “My lawyers are used to dealing with trash like you.”
That same day, Emmy arrives in Italy. And that’s when Zach tells her about the suicide. Zach doesn’t tell her about Julia. But in a tacky movie like “Turbulence,” Julia is not going to go away quietly.
Emmy is feeling down because of the miscarriage. Zach tries to comfort her by saying to Emmy: “You’ve got to stop feeling guilty. Take as much time as you need.” Emmy thinks they should go ahead with their scheduled hot air balloon trip through the Dolemites mountain range.
Their hot air balloon guide is an American named Harry (played by Kelsey Grammer), who tells Emmy and Zach that he’s originally from Chicago. Harry mentions that in addition to owning a hot air balloon business, he works part-time as a clown. Harry says he’s a “qualified clown” from “my days in the circus when I was a kid.” Harry being in this horrible movie is another reason why he’s a “qualified clown.”
Harry says a few other people signed up for this trip, but they haven’t shown up. Just as Harry, Emmy and Zach are about to leave in the balloon, someone else who signed up for the trip shows up: Julia, who says she’s sorry for being late.
Zach pretends that he’s never seen Julia before. But not long after the balloon takes off, things get uncomfortable and then downright nasty, as Julia confronts Zach and accuses him of having a sexual one-night-stand with her. Zach vehemently denies the accusation.
The rest of “Turbulence” turns into a moronic “Fatal Attraction”-type soap opera in the air, but not with a “Fatal Attraction” ending. Julia has a knife, and there are physical fights on the hot air balloon. But the idiocy of Zach and Emmy knows no bounds.
For example, at one point Julia gets knocked unconscious, but none of the people on board the hot air balloon thinks about taking her knife. And when she regain consciousness, you know exactly what she’s going to do. All of the fights on the balloon look incredibly phony because of the atrocious acting and unconvincing visual effects.
Another example of a foolish decision is when the hot air balloon becomes uncontrollable and goes way off course. Emmy decides they should lighten the weight of the balloon, so she throws overboard the backpacks that she and Zach brought with them—the same backpacks that have all their food and water. She could’ve kept the food and water and thrown out everything else that was dead weight.
Meanwhile, the balloon gets damaged and has its fuel fire extinguished multiple times, but the laws of physics don’t exist in the movie. The “Turbulence” filmmakers must think that people who are most likely to watch this film don’t know basic science. “Turbulence” doesn’t have much to offer except to show how not to make a movie that takes place mostly in a hot air balloon. Some of the outdoor scenery looks lovely, but that’s about the only thing that this movie gets right.
Irvine’s acting is wooden for most of this ludicrous flick. Kurylenko is too hammy, while Hilmar has a sleepwalking tone to her acting until the part of the film where Emmy suddenly becomes an expert in hot ballooning. Grammer isn’t in the movie long enough to make any impression except that he clearly did this junkpile movie for a quick salary.
“Turbulence” has a “plot twist” that isn’t as clever that the filmmakers think it is. In fact, it’s probably the most obvious conclusion, considering all the clues that were shown along the way. “Turbulence” might have been an enjoyable watch if there had been some level of campiness to the movie’s tone. But it’s a bad movie that takes itself too seriously, which is often the worst type of bad movie.
Lionsgate released “Turbulence” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on December 12, 2025.