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Glasshouse reveals subtle surprises and remarkable revelations laced throughout its plot, and none of them ever feel cheap or like narrative tricks. The viewer almost feels like a victim of the Shred throughout the film, rarely certain of what's true, lost in a foggy daze that's simultaneously sinister and pretty.Īs the film progresses, a fascinating power struggle develops which is cleverly and realistically handled, with certain characters relying on the memory loss of other characters in order to manipulate them and lie their way into dominance. The result is a film that combines the dreamy mystery of Panic at Hanging Rock, the male intruder into a group of women seen in The Beguiled, the post-apocalyptic family struggles of A Quiet Place, and the devious use of dialogue for power politics in the Pinter plays The Homecoming and The Birthday Party. The incongruities in the film also contribute to its hazy surreality, with the green grass and gardens and the Victorian-era dresses of the women giving an almost textural and organic feel to Glasshouse, while the ever-looming threat of the Shred, the dystopian environment, and the polite cannibalism enshrouds that softness with menace and horror.

The entire film feels dreamy, with light filtering through stained-glass and walls of plastic and creating a blurred background haze, and the sometimes strange dialogue (punctured by dementia, or hidden in half-truths) adding to the effect. She maneuvers jarring cuts and sound design into the film, interrupting the otherwise dreamlike flow, and does a great job with close-ups and reverse shots, building intrigue by focusing on reactions. Egan's direction, however, keeps things cinematically suspenseful and inventive in a way that theater couldn't. They employ their sci-fi concept in the service of what's really a chamber drama (which is appropriate, considering the term usually refers to theater, and Glasshouse does often feel like a stage play). Writers Emma Lungiswa de Wet and Kelsey Egan do an excellent job at creating mounting tension mostly from dialogue. Thus begins a psychological thriller in which viewers are never quite sure who is telling the truth, who is being manipulated, and whose memory is truly accurate. How much has The Stranger forgotten? Has he brought the Shred in with him? What does he know about the outside world? Can he be trusted? Can anyone, including oneself? These are the questions the family must ask after their idyllic post-apocalyptic Garden of Eden is shattered by the sudden intrusion of a stranger, the same way a functioning immune system becomes discombobulated by the introduction of a toxin. Related: Best Movies About Pandemics and Viruses, Ranked She brings his body back into the glasshouse and tends his wounds, to the combined curiosity and distress of her family. One day, a trespasser (The Stranger, played by Hilton Pelser) crosses into the compound, but he collapses before Bee shoots him.

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Her brother had wandered off one day and never returned, so she waits for him most nights, flickering a flashlight in a code that he once recognized, unsure if he'll ever recognize anything again if the Shred got to him.

They sit in their watch towers in shifts, armed and masked.īee does the same at night, except she's looking for more than trespassers. These people guard the compound (sealed up by plastic in every direction) and shoot trespassers, whose bodies are mostly used for fertilizer and food. Led by Mother (Adrienne Pearce), the family consists of the pleasant but naive Bee (Jessica Alexander), the stern and protective Evie (Anja Taljaard), the young and precocious Daisy (Kitty Harris), and the frustrated and near-silent Gabe (Brent Vermeulen), the only member who seems to have been exposed to the pandemic (called the Shred) and has a kind of dementia as a result. His body will be laid out on a table in one of the many rituals practiced by the family in the compound, which often seems more like a cult. The film opens with a young woman, adorned in a flowing white dress and industrial gas mask, shooting a trespasser with a rifle. Glasshouse is set in a post-apocalyptic South Africa, in what is essentially a compound - greenhouses connected to sleeping chambers surrounded by fortifying structures like guard towers.

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