When Ruby's parents are killed in a road crash after celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary, her troubles are only just beginning.

Ruby (Leelee Sobieski) and her kid brother Rhett (Trevor Morgan) are turned over to their legal guardians - Erin and Terry Glass (Diane Lane and Stellan Skarsgard).

Things look good when they are picked by stretch limo and taken to the Glass House, a concrete, steel and glass designer home perched on a Malibu Beach bluff.

In the absence of children of their own the Glasses seem to have laid everything on - trendy new clothes for Ruby and a videogame system for Rhett.

However, little things begin to bother 16-year-old Ruby. Terry gets over-familiar after taking her out for a meal and she arrives to find Erin shooting up.

It's easily explained away: Erin is a diabetic, while Ruby's run-in with Terry is dismissed as her - not him - getting "skittish".

By now, alarm bells should have drowned out some of the preposterous dialogue but Ruby perseveres until the mountain of evidence sparks her into action.

Debut feature director Daniel Sackheim builds up an interestingly tense premise and then throws it all away by spelling things out in letters 20ft high.

Every motive and evil deed by the increasingly deranged Glasses is underlined and bolded up, instead of being allowed to quietly fester at the back of your mind.

What salvages a daft piece of film-making are the performances, particularly that of Sobieski as the resourceful Ruby.

She lends an aura of reality to the early scenes and it's only her presence at the end that makes you want to go the full distance, as the script gets unintentionally hilarious.