You won't be disappointed!

Very well executed

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

An orphaned teenager is taken in by a Malibu couple but discovers they aren't the caring friends they seemed to be. The Glass House has a fantastic and talented cast, full of suspense thriller moments and some good perfomances, the film's 3rd act does lack in certain areas a bit but it's still a great and well made low budget movie that is better than most thrillers in this day and age. (8/10)

I initially watched "The Glass House" when it first came out on DVD and remembered it being a solid thriller. I recently watched the film with a more critical eye and, though I now realize it isn't a "classic" in any sense of the word, I was still entertained by it.For a basic plot summary, "The Glass House" sees siblings Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) and Rhett (Trevor Morgan) Baker orphaned when their parents die in a car wreck. As such, their new custodians (friends of the family) Terry (Stellan Skarsgard) and Erin (Diane Lane) Glass take them into their Malibu mansion. Though life seems to go okay for the youngsters at first, they soon discover that living with Mr. and Mrs. Glass may not be quite as innocent as it seems."The Glass House" is a movie that probably should be directed at teenagers. The themes are quite transparent and predictable, so adult viewers will likely see right through it (not unlike the Glass house itself!). However, teenagers will be much more willing to put aside their disbelief and just "enjoy the ride". If you can do that, this movie can suck you in.I wish I could say the acting in this movie is great, because at some parts it truly is, but the characters are so stereotypical for the thriller genre that it is tough to see them as anything but. Sobieski probably shines brightest in the piece, as she combines patented teenage sex appeal with some solid acting chops. Skarsgard & Lane are great actors in their own right, but (like I said) their characters are somewhat spoiled by predictability.I saw "The Glass House" as a teen, so it made an impact on me (hence the 4-star rating). It probably is more of a 3-star flick, truth be told. Yet, show it to the right audience and it can provide some decent entertainment as a thriller.

Unfortunate to be released 3 days after the 9/11 attacks, this movie sank without a trace. The fact it's taken me thirteen years to watch a movie staring my childhood crush Diane Lane, the always usually reliable Stellan Skarsgard and one of my favourite young actress's of the era Leelee Sobieski says how badly this movie did and was reviewed upon release. When Ruby (Sobieski) and Rhett Baker's parents are killed in a car accident, they must travel to Malibu, to live with Terrence and Erin Glass, their former neighbours. But they are not the friendly couple the claim to be. The movie is massively flawed in several areas, I have never seen Lane put in a performance this bad before, and likewise Skarsgard puts in a career low performance. Only Sobieski puts in a good performance, and she certainly fills out a bikini nicely. Both talented and attractive in equal measure, it's because of her the movie succeeds where it does. I'm amazed her career never hit higher heights. Bruce Dern pops up in a role as a lawyer and he is also OK. A lot of my problems with this movie are more to do with the script and it's direction.It is lazily shot with just the actors seemingly placed in front of the camera. As for the script it does not have a natural flow with lots of things going on all at once and lots of things unexplained as characters come and go.Outside of Sobieski, there is little to enjoy, but another asset to this movie is the score. It hits all the rights spots, at all the right times. Despite everything I think the premise of the movie is a good one, and with Sobieski at the lead it's more than watchable. I think released a month earlier, this would have done very differently. A 7/10 is a generous score, but since the movie was carried solely by Sobieski it's a worthy one.

THE GLASS HOUSE is another over-plotted, overwritten and entirely overblown Hollywood thriller that goes over age-old ground without ever finding its own original standing. It's a sanitised, teen-friendly movie with a teen lead and a narrative that hints at plenty but never once approaches anything remotely dark.The story goes that the youthful protagonist (played by the utterly cold Leelee Sobieski) and her younger brother are sent to live with some family friends after they're orphaned in a car accident. The girl soon realises that something's seriously wrong in their new home, a sinister situation embodied by an overacting Stellan Skarsgard (a guy who seems to be typecast as the bad guy in Hollywood).That's a halfway decent premise, but THE GLASS HOUSE wastes its potential as it goes on, ending up mired in a muddled middle and uninspiring climax. You can literally work out everything that's going to happen in the first half hour, and there are no surprises or genuine shocks. There's no decent acting, either; bringing in Bruce Dern as the family lawyer doesn't do much, while Daniel Sackheim's direction is staid and uninspiring. It's best to give this one a miss.