Year: 2013
Runtime: 101 mins
Language: English
Director: Patrick McGuinn
It’s Good To Have a Thick Skin… Birch, a young man living in the Catskill Mountains, reunites with his childhood friend from the city, Andrew.
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Read the complete plot breakdown of Leather (2013), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
Andrew Glaszek plays Andrew, a gay city-dwelling man who travels with his lover, Jeremy Neal as Kyle, to the mountains to clear out his estranged father’s hoarder-filled home. The journey quickly shifts from a routine cleanout to something far more opaque and emotionally charged, as the trio confronts a complicated past and uneasy present.
There they encounter Chris Graham as Birch, a leather worker who has been living in the father’s house and who has just ended a straight relationship with a woman who moved away. Birch’s presence unsettles the delicate balance Andrew hoped to maintain, and his arrival introduces a volatile mix of charm, secrecy, and need.
Birch arrives with a magnetic certainty, claiming to wield a new will that grants him the home and property, and he has allegedly forged the father’s name on checks. The claim is contested by Andrew, who questions its value and legitimacy. The two men, who were once childhood companions, find themselves drawn into a tense confrontation that blurs lines between resentment, memory, and desire.
What follows is a fraught and intimate negotiation borne out of that conflict. The two men navigate an uneasy understanding, and their interactions take on a dangerous, almost hypnotic heat in the woods, where secrecy and longing intertwine in erotic moments that complicate loyalties and motives. Kyle’s discovery of a gun, a substantial cash stash, and some paperwork that remains unseen adds another layer of danger and mystery to the mounting tension.
The evidence—forged checks, the gun, the cash—begins to feed the viewer’s suspicions: might Birch have killed the father to seize the inheritance, leaving behind a trail of questions and possible lies? The father’s burial on the property, conducted without doctors, a death certificate, or an autopsy, deepens the mystery and invites doubt about what truly happened.
Birch is depicted with a disarming ease that makes people trust him, leaving room for doubt about his true character. Is he a caregiver who lost his way, a crafty opportunist, or something more dangerous—someone who could twist affection into a foothold on the inheritance?
Kyle returns to the city with the knowledge that Andrew is involved with Birch, while Andrew remains entangled in his relationship with Birch. Birch even writes to the ex-girlfriend to encourage a visit, a move that hints at manipulation and the possibility of deeper plans. The film leaves questions in the air rather than offering tidy answers, inviting viewers to weigh Birch’s potential innocence against the darker possibility of calculated deception.
The story unfolds in a moodily renders the tension between trust and ownership, between past friendship and present temptation, as the mountains guard a house—and a legacy—shrouded in ambiguity. It asks whether a person can truly belong to a place—or to another person—when the price of that belonging is measured in doubt, desire, and the ever-present risk of betrayal.
Last Updated: October 03, 2025 at 06:47
Discover curated groups of movies connected by mood, themes, and story style. Browse collections built around emotion, atmosphere, and narrative focus to easily find films that match what you feel like watching right now.
Where desire and doubt become dangerously intertwined.If you liked the tense, simmering doubt in Leather, explore these movies where romantic longing is clouded by suspicion. These films share a slow burn approach, creating an uneasy atmosphere where characters wrestle with desire and distrust, often leading to ambiguous and thought-provoking conclusions.
Narratives in this thread typically center on a reunion or new relationship where one character's motives are unclear. The plot unfolds through subtle interactions and psychological manipulation rather than dramatic action, focusing on the erosion of trust. The central conflict is internal, as a character must navigate their attraction while uncovering potential deception, usually culminating in an ambiguous resolution.
These films are grouped by their shared focus on psychological tension fueled by eroticism and suspicion. They utilize similar techniques: slow pacing to build unease, a claustrophobic or isolated setting, and a tone that balances melancholic longing with tense dread. The experience is defined by a constant, low-level anxiety about the true nature of a relationship.
Reconnecting with the past, but can you trust it?For viewers who enjoyed the charged reunion in Leather, this collection features movies about childhood friends or estranged relatives reconnecting under mysterious circumstances. These dramas focus on buried secrets, emotional manipulation, and the haunting question of whether the past can ever be truly reclaimed.
The narrative pattern involves a character returning to a person or place from their past, disrupting a fragile status quo. The reunion acts as a catalyst, unearthing long-buried secrets, sibling rivalries, or suspicions about a death or inheritance. The central journey is one of investigation and emotional reckoning, as characters grapple with nostalgia versus a potentially dangerous reality, often ending without clear answers.
This thread groups films that use a reunion as the central narrative device to explore themes of belonging, betrayal, and the unreliability of memory. They share a moderate complexity, a tense or melancholic tone, and a deliberate pacing that allows the psychological implications to unfold. The ambiguous endings are a key unifying feature, emphasizing the lingering questions over neat resolutions.
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Track the full timeline of Leather with every major event arranged chronologically. Perfect for decoding non-linear storytelling, flashbacks, or parallel narratives with a clear scene-by-scene breakdown.
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