Glasshouse: Virus, Ritual Murder, a Handsome Stranger and Drama that Doesn't Always Stick

By Thom Ernst

Rating: B-minus

Moments into director Kelsey Egan's Glasshouse, a man seemingly guilty of nothing is shot and killed. The shooter is a young woman. Her clothes are out of step with her weapon, a rifle more contemporary than the Victorian fashion her wardrobe implies. 

The woman—nearly young enough to be a girl—is pleased by her marksmanship. It's possible she likes it too much.

Also pleased are the women who surround her—one no more than a child—some arguing for the right to have their turn when the next unfortunate wanders by.

Kitty Harris and Adrienne Pearce are in lockdown and loaded in a post-viral world.

The body is taken inside and prepped, seemingly for burial. The group's matriarch (Adrienne Pearce), resembling Katharine Hepburn from Long Day’s Journey Into Night, presides over the body before it is ritualistically dismembered and scattered about as fertilizer.

So, not so much a burial as it is a kind of planting.

It's a helluva start.

Suppose you identify as one of the last of the authentic drive-in crowd. In that case, the film might trigger an unprecedented flashback to Motel Hell. In this 1980 horror movie, guests of the demented proprietors of a backwoods motel are drugged, planted then harvested.

But the analogy doesn't stick.

Glasshouse resembles a lot of films, but Motel Hell is not one of them. More apt comparisons are The Beguiled (1971) or, if strictly looking at pace and style, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). But even the likeness to these films doesn't entirely complete the picture. 

Glasshouse is not as transparent as it might seem.

The film tells the story of a group of women, a girl, and a low-functioning adolescent male confined to living in a Greenhouse, a.k.a. Glasshouse. It’s a perverse Garden of Eden and sanctuary from a memory-erasing virus called The Shred.

They function as a family, but their relationship with each other is not always clear.

Bee (Jessica Alexander) and Evie (Anja Taljaard) are devoted sisters who remain devoted, despite hints of rivalry, resentment, and references to a past indiscretion. The sisters' affection for each other is often fueled with sparks of jealousy.

There is Gabe (Brent Vermeulen), who, at least for a while, is the sole male in the house. He is sweet, most undoubtedly innocent, but a growing problem. Gabe has been exposed to The Shred and cannot understand nor control his urges.

Daisy (Kitty Harris is the youngest. Daisy is a feisty little girl who, appropriate to her age, experiments with makeup and in creating, if not wholly taking charge, of her developing femininity. Her performance seems intentional and effectively built upon Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby.

The family lives in relative comfort, given that enough plants are grown in the Glasshouse to sustain them. However, other lungs taking up additional oxygen could cause a problem.

Cue the handsome Stranger (Hilton Pelser), who, in a moment of weakness or humanity, is allowed to enter the Glasshouse. Alive. 

Drama. Glasshouse does not lack in it.

Egan's refusal to bend to genre conventions can be refreshing, but only after processing the disappointment that follows from the intensity of the opening scenes. The story veers away from science-fiction and into melodrama—a chamber room apocalypse done with grace and decency as if to say, "The ruin of humankind is a poor excuse for bad manners."

Egan allows the drama to undercut the intensity she establishes in the film's opening scenes

I'm all for the drama. Unfortunately, the drama in Glasshouse comes as an intrusion on the promise of a different story—a better story camouflaged behind the one being told.

Glasshouse is directed by Kelsey Egan and stars Jessica Alexander, Anja Taljaard, Brent Vermeulin, Adrienne Pearce, Kitty Harris and Hilton Pelser. Glasshouse is currently available on digital platforms.