TURBULENCE (2025)

Genre: Action/Drama
Director: Claudio Fäh
Cast: Hera Hilmar, Jeremy Irvine, Kelsey Grammer, Olga Kurylenko
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 12 March 2026

Synopsis: Young married couple Zach and Emmy decide to take a hot air balloon trip across the Italian Dolomites to rekindle their relationship. When they and pilot Harry are joined by a third passenger, Julia, events unfold in ways in which they could never imagine five thousand meters in the air.

Movie Review:

High-concept thrillers can be hit or miss – and in the case of ‘Turbulence’, as high as it physically gets, its thrills stay pretty low.

The concept here rests on a married couple, Zach (Jeremy Irvine) and Emmy (Hera Hilmar), who go on a hot-air balloon ride in the Dolomites in an attempt to repair their marriage after Emmy’s unfortunate miscarriage and subsequent depression, only to have their holiday interrupted by a mysterious woman Julia (Olga Kurylenko) with an agenda she intends to finish with Zach.

As the setup goes, Zach and Julia had met in a bar in Zurich before Zach had travelled to Italy to meet up with Emmy, and despite not hiding the fact that he is married (with a ring on his left finger in plain sight), something happened between the two of them that gave Julia sufficient leverage to demand compensation of 500 million euros to buy her silence.

It is frankly not hard to guess whether Zach is indeed the honourable man he professes to be in front of Emmy, or if he had a one night stand with Julia as she claims. Oh yes, what matters is not so much the destination as the journey, and the tension between Zach and Julia soon comes to a head at 8,000 feet into the air.

For one, the group lose their guide Harry (Kelsey Grammer), an American originally from Chicago who in addition to owning a hot air balloon business now also works part time as a clown. Suffice to say his fall from the balloon is no laughing matter, leaving a du plicitous Zach, a doubtful Emmy and a vengeful Julia to fend for themselves while fighting amongst themselves.

Making the best out of a limited budget, director Claudio Fah and screenwriter Andy Mayson engineer a number of harrowing scenarios – some of these have to do with Julia of course, and the rest with the elements, what with Zach and Emmy needing to navigate their hot air balloon over, above and around the ridges of the Dolomites, while dealing with a fire in their basket, a severed rope that controls the air flow at the top of the balloon so they don’t drift off too high, and a torn canopy that could deflate them right in the middle of a thunderstorm. The staging could certainly be better, but there are still genuinely nail-biting moments in between.

What does take the air out of the proceedings is how not quite realistic it is – ultimately, the whole point of the endeavour is to appreciate how a kindergarten teacher (we mean Emmy) and an unscrupulous venture capitalist (no prizes for guessing who we mean) can overcome the odds to survive nature and some nasty bit of human nature in close proximity. Fah’s staging is too cavalier to put us in the thick of the action nor for that matter for us to share vicariously in Emmy’s anxiety as she dangles precariously in mid-air to secure the rope or the torn part of the canopy.

Though it could clearly have been more, ‘Turbulence’ is adequately engaging as a time-killer if you keep your expectations low. Truth be told, we went into this with little to no expectations, and we came out feeling neither too thrilled nor too disappointed at what it turned out to be. So likewise, if you keep your hopes in check, you’ll probably find ‘Turbulence’ a harmless bit of entertainment that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Movie Rating:

(A sky-high thriller with a juicy premise that never quite takes flight, Turbulence delivers mild, occasionally tense entertainment—but little lasting impact beyond a passable time-killer)

Review by Gabriel Chong