Welcome back to Movie Recaps. Today I will show you a crime,
drama, mystery film from 2001, titled The Glass House. Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care.
The film opens up with teenage girl Ruby Baker enjoying a horror movie at the theatre with her
friends. She isn't very scared, but at least they get a good laugh out of it. When the film is over,
one of the girls wonders where they should go next, but Ruby says she should return home.
She can't afford to have another argument with her parents, they believe her to be sleeping. The next
morning, she's shown having breakfast with her parents and her brother Rhett before leaving for
school. There she meets her friends and they make plans together to go out again later.
That night, David and Grace go to a restaurant to celebrate their twentieth anniversary.
Unknown to them, Ruby also goes out to spend the evening smoking, speeding and going to a
rave with her friends, they also laugh at how much her parents trust her. When she makes it home, she
puts on perfume to cover the smoke smell before noticing there's a police car waiting outside,
making her think her parents called the cops on her. She goes inside and tells the officers
she isn't missing, but they aren't there for her: they've come because her parents have
been in a car accident and didn't make it. The shocking news makes her faint.
A day or two later, they have a funeral. During the corresponding mass, Rhett wants to say some
words, but he's too upset to manage it. It's then that we're introduced to Doctor Erin Glass and
Terry Glass, close friends of the family. They take over Rhett and make a very touching speech.
When the mass is over, Ruby is approached outside by her uncle Jack, who offers his
help with anything she may need. Ruby wonders how come she hasn't seen him in ten years,
Jack replies he and her mom grew apart, he also points out he leaves very far away.
She doesn't take him very seriously and just thanks him before leaving for her home.
At her house, a home funeral is being held. The place is crowded and so Ruby stays in the
kitchen to have a moment by herself, but she's found by Alvin Begleiter, the family lawyer.
He informs her that she and Rhett will be taken in by the Glasses,
and that her parents have left them enough money not to worry about it ever again. Begleiter
gives Ruby his card and leaves the room as the Glasses enter it to hug Ruby and comfort her.
Some days later, Rhett and Ruby leave their empty house behind to move to Malibu with Erin and
Terry. When they make it there, they're surprised to find the house is huge and mostly made of
glass. Terry gives them a tour of the house while Erin gets some food ready - he shows them around,
introduces them to the housekeeper and then takes them to what will be their room,
which they'll have to share for now. Neither of the siblings looks happy about this. Later
that evening, Erin serves some fancy food the siblings aren't willing to even touch,
so she has to order pizza instead. When bedtime comes, Rhett is still awake and fooling around,
so Ruby goes out to the hallway to change. Someone seems to be watching her. Ruby hears a noise and
when she turns around, she sees a shadow leaving. It's time to go to their new school the next day,
which will be public instead of private. Ruby introduces herself to her new class with a
successful joke, but things get awkward when they ask her why she moved to Malibu. After school,
when the siblings return to their room, they find gifts: a bunch of videogame consoles for Rhett,
and tons of clothes for Ruby. Moments later, Ruby is telling a friend on the phone about
her new school while watching tv: she complains about all the kids being too well behaved and not
able to see how they've lost their liberties, like the fact they can't use pagers at school.
Her chat is interrupted by Erin, who calls her over to the kitchen. While they're putting away
the groceries, Erin tells her she should have a better attitude towards her new school: turns out
she had been listening to her phone conversation. Later that night, while in bed, Ruby believes her
mom is there to wake her up, but when she suddenly sits up in the bed she realizes it was just a
dream. Too upset to sleep now, she changes into a bathing suit and goes for a swim at the house's
own pool. All is going well until a presence startles out of it: it's Terry, who has been
woken up by the noise. He says he thought it was an intruder because he isn't used to having kids
around. He helps her out of the pool and gives her a towel as he stares at her inappropriately.
He bans night swimming from now on, since the glass allows all noise to go through, and says
he'll start setting up the alarm at night. Another day at school, Ruby is shown a video
about drunk driving, which makes her think about her parents' accident and upsets her in class.
She continues to be upset later at dinner when the Glasses ask her about her drive ed classes,
so she excuses herself and goes to the bathroom to search for some pain-killers. Erin finds her
there and tries to comfort her, Ruby lies and says this is about her having her period. Erin
takes her to her own bathroom, where Ruby finds out she's keeping a big amount of pharmaceuticals.
Ruby's given a pill that turns out isn't just a pain killer: when she goes to bed,
she's too relaxed and spaced out, not even bothered by Rhett's videogame playing.
A couple of hours later, she wakes up to find Rhett sleeping on the floor in front of the tv.
As she drags him to his bed, she hears Erin and Terry arguing and steps out
of the room to take a look, Terry closes the curtains as soon as he sees her there.
Next day at school, a classmate asks Ruby about the rumor of her having been on academic
probation. Ruby explains about the time she had gone partying instead of doing her homework,
so she downloaded the essay from the internet and handed it in, but she was busted.
When she goes back home, Terry asks her to come with him to a premiere. Ruby says she
has homework to do, but Terry tells her she will have enough time, so she accepts to go with him.
In the end, however, Terry doesn't drive them to the premiere, he takes them to a restaurant. While
eating, he reminiscence about the day he met the Bakers. Ruby takes the chance to ask him if last
night's argument was about them, and Terry says no, it was just usual married couple stuff and
being married to Erin can be lonely. She points out it's her bedtime, so Terry drives her back,
but he's doing so rather fast and wildly. After almost crashing against another car, Terry pulls
over and leans in towards her in a very creepy manner, then claims it was just to help her fasten
her seatbelt. When they make it to the house, Ruby goes to the living-room to pick up her
books and finds a baked Erin injecting herself. Worried about all the things she's noticing, the
next day after class she goes to visit Begleiter to tell him all about it. Begleiter reminds her
that if it doesn't work out with the Glasses, the siblings will become wards of the state.
Ruby points out that she made the housekeeper drive her all the way from Malibu then hitchhiked,
which made her very scared but kept going because she was sure Begleiter would help her.
Begleiter says he'll see what he can do and, when Ruby asks him how much money her parents
left them, he says it's four million dollars. After Ruby leaves, he makes a phone call.
Night falls. After dinner, the Glasses dismiss Rhett so they can talk to Ruby.
They tell her that what she saw last night was Erin giving herself insulin injections
for her diabetes. They also mention how she got skittish around Terry, they ask her to trust them.
She replies she may've overreacted. The next day, Ruby is never picked up
from driving school, so she walks all the way to GTI, Terry's company. The receptionist tells her
to wait in the lounge, and there, Ruby sees Terry being threatened by loan sharks he owes money to.
When Terry is violently pushed against the glass wall, she gets scared and decides to go wait in
the repair shop, where she freaks out when she finds her parents' car. She can't investigate
much because it's at that moment that Terry comes to pick her up to take her home. On their way back
to the house, Ruby tells him she had to show up at the shop because the housekeeper didn't show up.
Terry explains he's fired her and Erin was supposed to pick her up instead, but she got
held up at the hospital. Ruby asks why he fired the housekeeper, Terry confesses he knows she had
driven her out of Malibu without his permission and that is their job to know everything. During
dinner that night, Ruby sees Terry put on the code for the house alarm and secretly writes down the
numbers. A few hours later, Ruby pretends to be doing her homework but she's actually looking at
an article online about her parents' accident - it mentions the wrong car. She writes an e-mail
to Begleiter asking him about it. Too upset to finish her homework now, she ends up falling
asleep in front of the computer, where Terry finds her. He smiles when he sees the unfinished essay
on the screen. The next morning, Ruby wakes up still there, and finds someone had finished the
essay for her. She thanks Terry for the help, he replies that would be wrong but winks at her.
Later at school, Ruby is summoned to have a meeting with an inspector for social services.
Ruby tells her about all the weird things that she's noticed around the house,
but she's worried that the agent going to check it out will get her in trouble.
The agent tells her she'll say is just a routine check and Ruby can pretend not to know her.
When the agent shows up at the house a couple of days later, the Glasses were ready for her.
They had prepared separate rooms for the siblings, put away Rhett's videogames and hid all the
pharmaceuticals. When the agent asks Rhett what he does in the evenings, he lies and says he reads.
Once the Glasses are out of the room, Ruby scolds him for it, and he says he's learned it from her.
Angry, she grabs the box he's holding and goes to throw it in the thrash,
where she finds two very important documents. One is a letter from a private school saying
they're sorry the Glasses won't send their kids there so they'll return the registration fee.
The other one is a postcard from their uncle Jack, checking on them and asking them to call.
Ruby tears off his phone number to keep. A few hours later, in the middle of the night,
Ruby is working on the computer when Terry passes by to ask if she likes her new room,
she replies it couldn't have come at a better time. After Terry's gone,
she tries to contact Begleiter through e-mail, she finds out her internet account has been closed. A
phone rings and Terry picks it up, it's the loan sharks demanding their money. Ruby picks up a
different phone to listen on the conversation and is almost discovered by Terry, but she hides just
in time. She hears Terry mention he's found a new personal piggy bank. After Terry goes back to bed,
Ruby uses a special code on the phone to find out where the call came from and save the number.
At school, Ruby is unsettled, so she leaves the classroom to call Begleiter through the payphone.
She tells him he hasn't gotten his e-mails because Terry busted her account, so he tells her what
he's found out then: the BMW her parents drove the night of the accident belonged to Terry's company.
It makes her think the accident was a trap prepared by Terry, but she cannot tell him this
because her teacher interrupts the conversation to take her to see the vice principal. They've found
out her essay had been plagiarized from a book, they also somehow know she's done this before.
The vice principal has already told the Glasses about the incident, and tells Ruby she isn't
sure she can continue in that school. Later at home, Erin tries to talk to Ruby about it,
and Ruby blames Terry for it. But Terry says it's time she starts taking personal responsibility.
It's 4am in the house when Ruby decides to leave her bed and change out of her pajamas.
She goes to the living room, where she finds a flier from an all female boarding school before
trying to reach her uncle Jack on the phone, only to get the answering machine. With a plan in mind,
Ruby steals Terry's car keys, wakes up her brother to make him come with her and,
after turning off the alarm with the code she learned the other day, they take a car
and escape the house. The noise wakes Terry up. The siblings can't go very far, however, because
the highway is closed thanks to a mud slide. The cop that explains this to her is suspicious of her
age and asks for her license and registration, which she of course doesn't have. The officer
asks her to step out of the car just as the Glasses arrive to take them back to the house.
On the drive back, Ruby accuses Terry of having killed her parents for the money,
he denies it but he's clearly shaken by the accusation.
When they reach the house, Ruby tries to run away as soon as she gets out of the car, but
Terry drags her inside. They struggle until Terry manages to pin her to the floor, telling her that
they don't need her because they also have Rhett and one kid is enough to get access to the trust.
Ruby calls out for Erin, who does show up but only to inject her with a sedative to put her to sleep.
A quick cut to Ruby's old friends tells us a month has passed and none of them have heard from her.
Back to Terry, he receives another call from the loan sharks but doesn't manage to buy more time.
Getting desperate, he goes visits the trustee the next day to try to
get some money under the pretense it is to build a new area for the siblings.
The trustee is suspicious, though, because he had gotten the school letter Ruby found in the
trash faxed to him. Terry's request is denied. Meanwhile, in the hospital, Erin is lying about
the amount of medicine her patients are taking so she can ask for more and steal it for herself.
Her conversation with the pharmacy is interrupted when she's asked to go see the medical director.
We find out later at the house that Ruby has been sedated all this time, and that Erin's
losing her medical license for stealing the pharmaceuticals she uses to keep Ruby down and
also her own addiction. Terry and Erin argue about their problems, and we learn Erin only became a
junkie after Terry killed the Bakers. Erin wants out, but Terry says this is already done and they
must contain the damage. He also says they need to get rid of Ruby and since Erin doesn't have
access to sedatives anymore, he leaves the house to see if he can acquire some himself.
Erin still has one last secret syringe left. When she picks it up from its hiding spot,
she finds some old homemade videos and decides to watch one. It's about her playing with little
Ruby on the beach. Guilt takes over her so Erin overdoses herself before going
upstairs where Ruby finds her body next to her on the bed the next morning. A few hours later,
Terry returns to the house after having acquired some morphine and finds her wife's body,
he also hears Ruby on the phone, giving someone their address. He goes after her, but she sneaks
around and takes her brother with her to hide. While Terry continues to search the house for
them, Rhett tries to leave through the front door only to be jumped on by Terry. He drags Rhett
back inside, but Ruby hits him before running away with her brother. Terry catches up with
them and captures them, then locks them up in the basement. The siblings find out there is a window
down there and start working on destroying the net that covers it with a wrench they find around.
Meanwhile, Terry works on sabotaging his Jaguar. Through the window, the siblings see him pull out
the Jaguar and park it outside before going back to the house to nap. Taking advantage of this,
Rhett manages to escape through the now broken window and steal the keys from Terry, after he
leaves we see Terry had been awake the whole time and is only pretending to sleep. The kids
leave the basement and see Terry on the couch, Ruby finds how easy this is very suspicious.
The doorbell rings then. Ruby hides with Rhett behind a wall and they watch Terry open the door
for Begleiter, who's come personally because Terry wouldn't pick up the phone. He informs
him the bank has blocked his guardianship account and there's an ongoing investigation.
We learn then that it was Begleiter that had been informing the Glasses of all of Ruby's moves,
but only because he thought he could trust them since the Bakers did,
and now he sees he may've been wrong. Ruby understands he had thought he was helping them.
A red car suddenly parks outside and two men come out: they're the loan sharks.
They enter the house and explain they were given a call by Terry's wife, but it was actually Ruby.
They ask for the money, Terry says he doesn't have it and blames Begleiter for it. The lawyer tries
to leave, but he gets stabbed by the sharks. Terry thinks that solves the problem, but the
sharks don't leave, they want to take Terry with them in the Jaguar. As they go outside, Ruby tells
Rhett to wait and sneaks out of the house. While they're tying up his hands with tape,
Terry convinces them to take the Volvo instead of the Jaguar, but when they open the garage,
they find the Volvo's tires had been slashed. Terry freaks out and the sharks cover his mouth
with tape as well, one of them takes the red car and the other goes with Terry in the Jaguar.
Ruby watches them drive away with a knife in her hand, she was the one that cut the tires.
On the road, the Jaguar starts losing control. It hits the red car, sending it to crash against a
truck. After dodging a couple of cars more, the Jaguar goes off the rails and crashes as well.
Sometime later, we find the siblings walking down the road hand in hand. A police car stops next to
them and the officer asks them to get in for help, they accept. A little later, they drive by the
destroyed red car, where cops are already taking care of the situation. They keep going and find
the second crash, the cop stops and leaves the car to investigate, but he is knocked out by Terry
after he asks for reinforcements. Terry steals his gun and goes after the kids, when they see him,
Ruby jumps on the driver's seat and desperately searches for the keys. Terry is almost on them
when she finally finds them and starts the car, drives it back but suddenly stops. Rhett freaks
out while Ruby remembers her parents' accident, so she tells him to buckle up while doing so herself
before driving the car into Terry, killing him as he's about to shoot. The kids leave the car
and hug as more cops arrive to rescue them. The movie ends with the siblings visiting
their parents' grave together with their uncle, who promises them they'll have a good life.