A killer “Glass House” location and pretty much nothing else recommend “Glass Casa.” It’s a comic thriller whose clumsy structure, limp performances and forgettable dialogue do nothing to separate it from the pack of similar movies that trap a bunch of young people — stoned bridesmaids in this case — in a house with a body, a drawling, literary-minded “hobo,” and perhaps even the “spirits” of cartel killers who used to own the joint.
But they loved “Glass Casa” in San Diego, where it was filmed and where it took a prize at a local film festival. And all involved seem to have done their best to “game” the Internet Movie Database’s “audience rating.” Bless their hearts.
Harley Bronwyn stars as a screenwriter/bride-to-be whose business-suited sister Drew (Alison Iles), abrasive bestie Bianca (Nicole Clifford) and nurse bud Evie (Geri Courtney-Austein) join her for a bachelorette weekend in a borrowed modernist mansion that’s been on the market for a while.
It’s one of those electronic trap houses you mostly find in movies (better ones) like this. The only way you can operate stuff or get in and out is via an app.
Charlie the squatter (Justin Michael Terry) is already there. But he seems harmless enough to allow to stick around, if only to show them how to operate that app. Sure.
And that stripper (Jon Huybrecht) whom Evie arranged, and who is also Evie’s “side piece?” He’s in for more than just a performance for the stoned bridesmaids and a performance by Evie in the sack. He winds up dead.
Was it an accident? If not, whodunit?
The conceit here is that Jamie starts wondering if this whole scenerio is one she’s written, with tiwsts and turns she recognizes and possible suspects based on people she knows — aka, her friends, her groom-to-be (Travis Laughlin) or um, “Lamey Jamie,” a buck-toothed and bespectacled version of her teen self.
“We should split up” to hunt for clues (some of them notes in Spanish), one friend offers.
“When my characters split up is when they start getting picked off,” Jamie protests. Because she and literally every other horror/thriller screenwriter on Earth has scripted that “twist.”
Needless to say, the conceit doesn’t come off. Nobody’s that convincingly “stoned.” The mystery isn’t that mysterious. The killings are not novel, even though her friends note how this house offers all sorts of “cool” places for a killing to take place.
The cinema used to be more a gatekeeper-directed business, with self-financed movies earning notice at film festival(s) and then picked-up by distributors because they see a little profit in them.
This cast of forgettable unknowns in a movie that didn’t move any needle outside of San Diego is indicative of a new business model. When everybody else says “No,” just put it out there — on Amazon and other streamers. Try to build buzz, find “your” audience” and/or make money.
But here’s what the distributors who “passed” on “Glass Casa” may have been too tactless to tell writer-director Laa Marcus & Co. This weak tea indie has nothing going for it. At all. It’s not cleverly plotted, cast or well-acted.
It’s lifeless and witless. About the best one can say for it is “Better luck next time.” And that yes, that sea-view hillside “Casa” in San Diego makes one helluva location.
Rating: unrated, violence, drugs, sex
Cast: Harley Bronwyn, Nicole Clifford, Geri Courtney-Austein, Alison Iles, Justin Michael Terry, Jon Huybrecht and Travis Laughlin
Credits: Scripted and directed by Laa Marcus. Self-distributed, streaming Dec. 17 on Amazon, etc.
Running time: 1:44
