The Glass House is a 2001 American psychological mystery thriller film directed by Daniel Sackheim and written by Wesley Strick. The film stars Leelee Sobieski, Diane Lane, Stellan Skarsgård, and Bruce Dern with supporting roles by Kathy Baker, Trevor Morgan, and Chris Noth. It tells the story of two siblings who go to live with friends of their parents as the oldest of the siblings starts to get suspicious of the family friends' patriarch.
The film received generally negative reviews and was a box office bomb, grossing only $23 million on a $30 million production budget. The main reason cited for the financial failure of the film was that the film was released 3 days after the September 11 attacks.
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.