The Glass House (2001)

If you folded ''You Can Count on Me'' into ''The Stepfather'' and slowly sifted out the intelligence, you might end up with the dysfunctional-family thriller The Glass House. Like the former film, it starts with a young brother and sister whose lives are torn asunder when a car crash kills their mother and father; like the latter, it views the replacement parents with deep and justified suspicion. As long as director Daniel Sackheim mines that vein of adolescent paranoia -- as long as Ruby (Leelee Sobieski, teetering with fine sullenness between good-girl and bad-girl modes) fights to get her bearings in the Malibu showcase home of chic new guardians Terry and Erin Glass (Stellan Skarsgard and Diane Lane) -- ''Glass House'' unfurls as a series of resonant little chills. As the supporting cast gets winnowed away, though, we're left with a cat-and-mouse game between girl and murderous faux-dad that's simply boilerplate. The comforts of cliché are arguably welcome in light of recent events; that said, ''Glass House'' remains awfully easy to see through.

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