Plot
Sixteen-year-old Ruby Baker and her eleven-year-old brother Rhett lose their parents, David and Grace, in a car accident. Their will is not recent but per its terms, 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 now live in a large glass house in Malibu.
From early on, all is not well. Citing short notice, the children have to share a room and are transferred from private to public school mid-year. The Glasses buy Rhett both a Nintendo 64 and a PlayStation, and he is allowed to play them at all hours. Ruby is uncomfortable with Terry's sexual hints and reckless driving when they are alone. Ruby later finds unlabeled pharmaceuticals and sees Erin injecting herself, though Erin claims 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 visiting social worker Nancy Ryan 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 private school in Malibu, indicating the Glasses unregistered the children and pocketed the $30,000+ tuition. Ruby soon finds out that Terry is deeply 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. Ruby gradually comes to believe that the Glasses are after the siblings' trust fund, totaling $4 million.
Increasingly suspicious, 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 Terry's 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 for her behavior and states that he plans to send her to a strict and far away boarding school. Once Terry and Erin are asleep, Ruby steals Terry's car keys and attempts to escape with Rhett in Terry's Jaguar. Stopped by the police because of a mudslide ahead, they demand to see Ruby's license. Terry and Erin catch up to them, talking the police into letting the children go. On the drive back to the house, Ruby accuses Terry of killing her parents by sabotaging the car, which Terry denies. Back home, Ruby attempts to run away again, but Terry knocks her down and Erin sedates her.
Terry tells Erin they have to get rid of Ruby and he makes plans to administer an overdose and make it look like an accident. Erin reluctantly plans to help, but after Erin's drug abuse and theft is discovered by her employer, she is permanently stripped of her medical license. Overcome by guilt and grief, 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. Shortly after, Terry locks the children in the basement and sabotages his Jaguar, expecting them to reattempt escape in the car, then drinks himself into a stupor. The children manage to get out of the basement and while they attempt to escape the house, Begleiter arrives to speak to Terry. It is revealed that Begleiter had been informing Terry about Ruby's reports to him. Begleiter has grown suspicious after a call from the bank saying the guardianship is under investigation. Suddenly, the loan sharks appear at the house, stab Begleiter when Terry claims that he's responsible for Terry's debt, repossess Terry's Jaguar and Ferrari, and tie up Terry, insisting he take a ride with them. Overhearing Terry begging them to take the Volvo instead of the Jaguar, Ruby stabs the Volvo's tires, forcing them to drive away in the Jaguar with Terry in it. As a result of Terry's tampering, the loan shark loses control of the Jaguar, accidentally ramming the Ferrari into oncoming traffic, then goes over a ledge and crashes, seemingly killing the loan shark and Terry.
Moments later, the children leave the house on foot and are picked up by a friendly police officer. Coming across the accident scene where the Jaguar went off the road, the cop gets out of the car to investigate, discovering the loan shark's body. Terry suddenly appears and knocks the cop out. Severely injured, Terry climbs to the road and staggers towards Ruby and Rhett, hiding a gun. Ruby gets into the driver's seat and, telling Rhett to put on his seatbelt, speeds into Terry, killing him.
The kids are last seen placing flowers at their parents' grave with their Uncle Jack, who hugs them and says that things will get easier. Ruby says that they already have and the three leave together to go to Chicago.
Release
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.[2] 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.
Reception
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.[1]
Critical response
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that the film received positive reviews by 21% of the 86 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."[3] Roger Ebert rated the film 2 out of 4 stars and criticized the film's script.[4] Writing in The New York Times, A. O. Scott called it unintentionally funny.[5] Robert Koehler of Variety also called the film unintentionally funny and questioned why so many talented actors signed on to a poor script.[6] 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).[7][8] In a more positive review, USA Today's Claudia Puig rated the film two out of four stars, calling it "eerily engrossing."[9]
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.
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