GLASS HOUSE, THE (director: Daniel Sackheim; screenwriter: Wesley Strick; cinematographer: Alar Kivilo; editor: Howard E. Smith; cast: Leelee Sobieski (Ruby Baker), Diane Lane (Erin Glass), Stellan Skarsgard (Terry Glass), Bruce Dern (Begleiter), Kathy Baker (Nancy Ryan), Trevor Morgan (Rhett Baker), Chris Noth (Uncle Jack), Rita Wilson (Grace Baker), Michael O'Keefe (Dave Baker); Runtime: 105; Columbia Pictures; 2001)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A superficial scare film that makes a feeble attempt to serve up Hamlet as its theme, but that's a stretch. It's about a 16-year-old girl, Ruby Baker (Leelee Sobieski), and her much younger brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan), who become orphaned when their Encino, California, parents (Michael O'Keefe and Rita Wilson) are killed in an auto accident.
They are vulnerable and a deceitful Malibu couple takes advantage of them, as Terry and Erin (Stellan Skarsgard and Diane Lane), supposedly close friends of their parents, become their guardians. Somehow there are no family members to take them in and it's also most peculiar that the kids don't know the Glasses; but, nevertheless, they are turned over to this seemingly wealthy couple living in an ultra-modern glass house overlooking a cliff. Their estate lawyer, Begleiter (Bruce Dern), who is their adviser, says that's what their folks wanted and they would be wards of the state otherwise. He spends about two seconds with Ruby and drops that news on her like a bombshell, and then hands her his business card; he then offers her nothing else but to tell her that her parents were thrifty and left the kids enough money so that they would never have to worry about money. It didn't seem believable. He was certainly no bundle of warmth in their hour of need!
It's a film that is devoid of subtlety as its shocks are not surprising and its unfulfilling revenge ending in terms of 'An Eye For Eye' was poorly scripted; it also failed to be convincing or scary. It was just another mindless slasher film.
The Glasses put on a false front of being genuinely nice people when the kids move in, but it soon becomes apparent that they are a creepy couple with ulterior motives. The film spends most of its time showing the couple pretending to be nice but still looking creepy. They do not even give the kids separate rooms in the large house they have, as they are only able to keep Rhett unconcerned about his situation by buying him off with video games.
The usual bag of clichéd scare tricks are carried out before Ruby learns that the businessman in a car transit service business is in deep trouble financially because he took out a million dollar loan from some gangster loan sharks that he can't pay back, that his doctor wife is a drug addict, that he rigged the car her parents died in, and that she and her brother are in deep trouble staying in that house. It also shows there are no adults she can turn to for help and that all the institutions in place to service such situations, such as the schools and social welfare department, are no guarantee that help is on the way.
The film has a cold and steely look to it, as feelings on everyone's part are chilly. Ruby is a hard one to warm up to, as she's always wired for hostility, while her brother seems to be a slave to video games and has no personality. The house itself is smothered in a cold, aqua blue, as the production designer, Jon Gary Steele, and the director of photography, Alar Kivilo, have made the set to look like a clone of the antagonistic and cold-hearted Terry Glass. This kind of coldness lasted too long onscreen, as the film was trapped in its one-note of suspense--Will the kids get away from the evil couple who want to rob them and also kill Ruby? There was no suspense because if you ever watched any of these formulaic flicks then you will know how this one ends. The film's slow pace for such a slight story bordered on criminality.
This is basically a film that put a great effort into getting the sets it wanted to be right, but failed to get anything more out of this absurd tale. It was never believable, but its conclusion was even more ridiculous than it had a right to be.
REVIEWED ON 9/24/2001 GRADE: C
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DENNIS SCHWARTZ
========== X-RAMR-ID: 29595 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 251684 X-RT-TitleID: 1109671 X-RT-SourceID: 873 X-RT-AuthorID: 1315 X-RT-RatingText: C
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews