Another home invasion psycho-drama with Drew Barrymore as Ivy, a pouting school slut with a short skirt and a stick-on thigh tattoo. Ivy hooks up with misfit rich kid Sara Gilbert (the neurotic daughter on Roseanne) and moves into her palatial house, charming her bedridden glamourpuss mom (Ladd) and making moist eyes at her stuffy dad (Skerritt).
At first, Gilbert comes to depend on her friend and sort of enjoys getting drunk and tattooed, but gradually she realises that Ivy appears intent on replacing her in the household and, supremely pissed-off, turns vigilante to get her life back. While most of these movies have gripping first halves taut with psychological drama and hidden menace then blow all the hatches with look-out-behind-you stab-athon climaxes, this remains ambiguous and intriguing even when the inevitable murders start.
Barrymore never becomes an outright monster, even when staging suicides and seducing older men, and the on-off relationship between her and the fantasising, mixed-up Gilbert suggests all kinds of odd things going on between the antagonists. Unlike all those other rich white homes, this family isn't perfect at the outset and Barrymore is as bewildered and terrorised by the irrational mood swings of the folks she is stuck with as they eventually are by her habit of resorting to violence to sort out her problems