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Credits

Release Date: Sep 14, 2001; Rated: PG-13; Length: 111 Minutes; Genre: Thriller; With: Diane Lane, Trevor Morgan, Stellan Skarsgard and Leelee Sobieski
C+
By Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Ty Burr
Ty Burr is a writer at large for EW and is no relation to Raymond or Aaron

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 cliche are arguably welcome in light of recent events; that said, Glass House remains awfully easy to see through.


Posted Sep 28, 2001
 

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