When did thrillers all start to suck? You can’t find a good one anymore. And believe me, “The Glass House” is a prime suspect for pure unadulterated crap.

There’s no focus whatsoever. It jumps around incessantly, unable to make any coherent sense in its effort to appeal to a younger audience. But it is directed with an older older audience in mind, promising intelligent thrills. In the end, we all lose out, and this movie stands as one of the poorest thrillers brought to theaters in recent memory.

What could have been a fun ride through a teenage girl’s paranoia and psychological stress turns into poorly made drivel.

Leelee Sobieski is Ruby, who’s like, cool. She goes to a private school and acts up the way most private school girls do when they think they’re the baddest chick ever. She smokes a cigarette or two, comes home late and hikes up her jumper. Wow dude, that’s like, totally rebellious, like when Justin Timberlake got dreadlocks. Wow.

Well, her weakly-written parents die in a car crash. This should be sad, but before we know it Ruby and her brother are taken to their new home, living with Terry and Erin Glass (Stellan Skarsgard and Diane Lane, respectively).

Ruby seems to be in no shock from the death, sticking to the suburban melodrama it all started with in the first place. The only way we know it affects her at all is the way she can barely drive a car, which is hardly a big a deal with a 15-year-old.

Ruby’s parents were supposedly smart and loving, but they just happened to make the craziest people in the world the kids’ legal guardians. Not only do they live in a house that looks like the IKEA catalog exploded, filling it with yuppie goodness, but Terry chugs vodka like a fiend and Erin is shooting up with morphine. They make the kids stay in the same bedroom, and then walk around half-naked and arguing all over their pretty house - drunk and stoned.

On top of that, they’re flat broke (hey, post modern existentialist architecture doesn’t come cheap) and they plan on stealing the kid’s inheritance. Then we find out Terry is responsible for cutting the brakes on the car Ruby’s parents were driving and he was planning it all from the beginning.

Of course, they order expensive dinners every night, Terry owns a rental car company and Erin’s a doctor but I hear that business is pretty slow. No one seems to get sick or drive cars anymore - It’s crazy. So Terry and Erin have no choice but to steal the $4 million inheritance that a public television producer squirreled away. Again, just to clear this up - a doctor and a rental car business owner stealing money from someone who works at a place where they have to spend two weeks, twice a year, asking for donations.

The initial story is strong enough, but 1) we don’t need another teen thriller and 2) it completely falls apart halfway through. The script wimps out, giving away every detail and letting us know that Ruby isn’t just being paranoid. The tiny bit of restraint they show in the first 20 minutes works to a degree but it was at least an attempt at suspense.

But because of the desire to appeal to a teen audience, the moviemakers turn pansy and refuse to hold anything back.

The story is weak, the pace is choppy and all in all it comes off as a poor attempt at a thriller. I’ve been more excited to see what letter and number are sponsoring today’s “Sesame Street” episode than at any point in this movie.

The end even takes the easy route - as Ruby finally makes her stand and tries to escape, suddenly loan sharks barge in, grab Terry and drive away in a car rigged with no brakes, thanks to Terry himself (that’s like, totally ironic dude - wow). So Ruby is saved, except of course for the obligatory “bad guy comes back” routine, where he not only survives the crash, but escapes the duct tape he was wrapped in. Hey, they already figure we’re dumb enough for the rest of the flick - why get higher expectations at the end? No movie is complete without the most predictable possibility ever!

The only good part is when Ruby runs Terry over with a car. The only reason it was good is that I knew then that at last, my suffering was over. “The Glass House” could not go on any longer, because no one was left to act badly or drink vodka. Roll the credits and I was off to the bar myself, to forget this huge pile of crap-tastic filth.