The Glass House (2001 film)

The Glass House is a 2001 American psychological mystery thriller film directed by Daniel Sackheim and written by Wesley Strick. The film stars Leelee Sobieski, Diane Lane, Stellan Skarsgård, and Bruce Dern with supporting roles by Kathy Baker, Trevor Morgan, and Chris Noth. It tells the story of two siblings who go to live with friends of their parents as the oldest of the siblings starts to get suspicious of the family friends' patriarch. Released on September 14, 2001, the film received negative reviews from critics and grossed $23.6 million.

Plot
Sixteen-year-old Ruby Baker and her eleven-year-old brother Rhett lose their parents in a car accident. The children are placed under the guardianship of family friends and former neighbors, the childless couple Dr. Erin Glass and Terry Glass. Erin is a respected physician and Terry runs a high-end car dealership, they live in a glass house in Malibu.

Citing short notice, the children have to share a room and are transferred from private to public school mid-year. The Glasses buy Rhett two game consoles, which he is allowed to play at all hours. Ruby is uncomfortable with Terry's sexual hints and reckless driving when they are alone. Ruby later finds Erin injecting herself with unlabeled pharmaceuticals, claiming it is for diabetes. Ruby tries to get the children's estate and trust fund lawyer Alvin Begleiter to accept her concerns, but he is skeptical of her claims, as she was going through a rebellious phase prior to her parents' deaths, ultimately being suspended from school for plagiarism. Ruby pushes Begleiter to get social services involved, but the visiting social worker is taken in by the couple's assurances.

In the trash, Ruby discovers a postcard from her estranged uncle Jack in Chicago that she was never shown with his contact details, and a letter from a local private school, indicating the Glasses unregistered the children and pocketed the $30,000+ tuition. Terry turns out to be in debt to loan sharks, and Erin has a severe drug habit which she is subsidizing via prescription fraud and stealing drugs from her employer. The Glasses are after the siblings' trust fund, totaling $4 million.

Ruby investigates her parents' deaths after reading an article stating David had been driving a BMW at the time of the accident, knowing he owned a Saab. She discovers a damaged car similar to her father's at Terry's shop and learns the BMW her parents were driving was registered to Terry's business. After the loan sharks push him to pay off his debt, Terry tries to get money from the trust fund through the account trustee. Terry's request is denied and he is shown a copy of the letter from the private school, faxed to the trustee by Ruby, and raising suspicions about his intentions with the money. Later, Ruby is confronted by the vice-principal because an essay, which Terry wrote seemingly to win her favor, was plagiarized, leaving her future at the school uncertain.

That night, Terry angrily berates Ruby and states his plans to send her to a strict and far away boarding school. Once the Glasses are asleep, Ruby steals Terry's car keys and attempts to escape with Rhett in a Jaguar. Stopped by the police because of a mudslide ahead, they demand to see Ruby's license. The Glasses catch up to them, talking the police into letting the children go. Back home, Ruby attempts to escape again, but Terry knocks her down and Erin sedates her.

Terry tells Erin they have to get rid of Ruby, planning to administer an overdose and make it look like an accident. Erin plans to help, but after her drug abuse and theft is discovered by her employer, she is permanently stripped of her medical license. Distraught, Erin uses the remaining drugs on herself and commits suicide by overdose.

Ruby wakes up from her sedation and discovers Erin's body next to her in bed. Terry then locks the children in the basement and sabotages his Jaguar, expecting them to reattempt escape in the car. The children get out of the basement and attempt to flee when Begleiter arrives to speak to Terry. Begleiter had been informing Terry about Ruby's reports to him and has grown suspicious after a call from the bank saying the guardianship is under investigation. The loan sharks then appear, and Terry claims that the one responsible for his debt is Begleiter. The loan sharks stab Begleiter before repossessing two of Terry's cars. Overhearing tied-up Terry begging them to take the Volvo instead of the Jaguar, Ruby stabs the Volvo's tires, forcing them to leave in the Jaguar with him in it. Because of Terry's tampering, they lose control of the Jaguar, accidentally ramming the Ferrari into oncoming traffic and crashing.

The children flee on foot and are picked up by a police officer. Coming across the accident scene, the cop stops to investigate, discovering a loan shark's body. Terry then appears and knocks the cop out. Severely injured, Terry staggers towards Ruby and Rhett, hiding a gun. Ruby gets into the driver's seat and speeds into Terry, killing him.

The kids later place flowers at their parents' grave with their loving Uncle Jack. According to Ruby, their lives have improved. The three leave to go to Chicago.

Home media
The film was released on VHS and DVD on January 2, 2002. A Blu-ray version of the film has yet to be released in the US. The film finally debuted on the Blu-ray format for the first time on October 22, 2021 in Germany in a Blu-ray / DVD combo pack by Just Bridge Entertainment. The original cut of the film was reported to be 180 minutes long, with 74 minutes of footage missing from the theatrical cut. Kip Pardue played Leelee Sobieski's love interest in the original cut, though all of his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor. Of all the deleted footage, only two scenes managed to survive. They are included on the DVD as deleted scenes (listed below):


 * After Ruby faints when she finds the cops at her house, she wakes up the next morning believing her parents' accident was only a nightmare. When she heads downstairs, the neighbors are there to tell her it wasn't. Ruby sits at the table and cries as the camera slowly pans away from her, as Rhett is told offscreen and runs away in devastation.
 * Ruby and Rhett are seen at their parents' funeral burying their ashes at the cemetery.

There's also one scene in the trailer showing Ruby furiously ripping posters off her wall, which doesn't appear in the finished film or on home video.

Because of the film's critical and financial failure, the studio had little interest in keeping unused footage and the missing 74 minutes of footage have since been considered lost.

Box office
The film opened at number two in its opening weekend at the US box office, behind Hardball, in which Diane Lane also stars. The Glass House grossed $18,150,259 domestically and $5,469,350 overseas, grossing a total of $23,619,609.

Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that the film received positive reviews by 22% of the 87 surveyed critics. The average rating was 4.23/10, and the consensus is: "Due to obvious plot twists and foreshadowing, The Glass House fails to thrill. By the end, it degenerates into ludicrousness." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 34 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert rated the film 2 out of 4 stars and criticized the film's script. Writing in The New York Times, A. O. Scott called it unintentionally funny. Robert Koehler of Variety also called the film unintentionally funny and questioned why so many talented actors signed on to a poor script. Edward Guthmann, of the San Francisco Chronicle, criticized the film's violence and the timing of the release, which coincided with the September 11 attacks (in fact, for many critics it was the first film they saw after returning to work). In a more positive review, USA Today's Claudia Puig rated the film two out of four stars, calling it "eerily engrossing."

Sequel
A direct-to-video sequel, Glass House: The Good Mother, was released in 2006. The film did not feature any of the original characters and did not take place in the same house.