Anyone else remember the Turbulence series? They made three of them, though the latter part of the series went direct to video. And when the crew out at Anchor Bay sent out a copy of Turbulent Skies for me to review, I thought they were getting into the remake game. What I found, though, was something of a different color entirely.

Turbulent Skies joins Devain Industries, who have just created a plane that’s impervious to pilot error. But when the Devain family decides to pack said plane with a pack of VIPs for a celebratory maiden flight, they discover that just because a computer’s doing the piloting, it’s not really that impervious to pilot error after all. Now, with a pack of VIPs on board and the Pentagon planning to shoot first, it’s up to a regular old human pilot to execute a daring mid-air transfer in a bid to save them all.

See what I mean? Almost nothing to do with the original Turbulence series.

It has the feel of a SyFy original movie, though with the key caveat that this is actually pretty good, something that most SyFy original movies can’t quite claim. They do a nice job of building suspense, and the whole thing is actually pretty believable as far as science fiction goes. Science fiction often suffers from believability issues, and this is something that’s downright plausible compared to most anything we see.

Admittedly, there are problems here. There’s a bit too much of a propensity for dramatics here–sometimes, it reminds me of old Simpsons episodes, where someone, usually a general or the like, would glare into the camera and grate out “Get me Jack Killington,” or something like that. Turbulent Skies is way too much like that for its own good. Plus, a good chunk of this is going to look remarkably familiar--just watch for the plane to get all Skynet after a while and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Still though, leave aside the scenery chewing and the familiarity, and what you’ve got is a good, if clearly low-budget, romp that has a decent idea of what it’s doing, and does so reasonably well. This isn’t one for someone looking for a deep and complex title, but for a lazy Saturday afternoon or a popcorn-muncher with friends, well, Turbulent Skies will fill the bill nicely.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Turbulent Skies a seven out of ten. Although it’s got plenty of missteps and other errors in it, it does do a reasonably good job of what it set out to do. It’s not the best thing you’ll see, but it’s certainly a worthwhile effort from Anchor Bay.