Exteriors is the kind of film that pretends to be just three quiet conversations and then slowly opens your chest like a window. Three gay men, three coincidences and three chances to either grow up or run away all over again. Nothing explodes, except the stuff you thought you’d buried.
Exteriors (2023) is one of those films that looks small on the surface – three stories, a couple of men talking in apartments, backyards and offices – and then quietly turns into a little X-ray of how messy we can get when we mix desire, fear and old habits. It is an LGBTQ anthology drama by writer-director Mark Schwab, built around three gay men who all bump into something (or someone) they thought they had under control: an ex, a memory, or a fantasy.
Three stories, three coincidences, three heart attacks in slow motion
The film is structured as three separate chapters that lightly talk to each other in the background. We start with Wyatt (Christian Gabriel), an aspiring photographer who is shooting new headshots for his best friend Logan (Matthew Bridges). Logan is glowing, because he has a new boyfriend Shane (Jacob Betts), the charming screenwriter who seems to have fallen straight out of a gay Instagram explore page.
The small problem – of course there is one is that Wyatt already has history with Shane. Not some distant crush from high school, but the kind of recent, messy, half-finished thing that still burns behind the eyes. Wyatt realises what is happening before anyone says it out loud: his best friend is accidentally falling for the same guy he still wants. The whole chapter is basically one long, uncomfortable emotional close-up: should he tell Logan the truth, should he back off, or should he quietly try to win Shane back?
Schwab keeps this first story very intimate. We are mostly in rooms, watching these three guys orbit each other – flirting, joking, pulling back, pushing a little too far. If you have ever watched a friend proudly introduce you to their new boyfriend and felt your stomach flip for the wrong reasons, this chapter will hurt in all the familiar places.
Jason’s pool, Kenny’s house and a one-night stand that never really ended
The middle story follows Jason (Julian Goza), a pool cleaner who gets a job at a fancy house and suddenly realises that the man house-sitting there looks very much like someone from his past. Eight years earlier, in the middle of grief and confusion, Jason had a brief but intense connection with a guy in a queer club the kind of encounter that arrives at the worst moment and still somehow saves you.
The man by the pool is Kenny (Jose Fernando), and Jason is almost painfully eager to believe that he is the same person from that night. Kenny lets the story play for a while, almost like he is trying on this other life. Only later he admits that things are not that simple, he is married, he has his own history, and he is not the fantasy Jason built in his head.
This chapter is softer and more sentimental. A lot of it is just two men talking through dusk and night – about loss, about who they were then and who they have become. What is nice here is that Schwab doesn’t force them into a neat romantic ending. The film allows them to land in a new, platonic space, where they can mean something to each other without turning it into another tragic or perfect love story. For a genre that often assumes any two gay men in the same frame must end up in bed, that feels oddly refreshing.
Dr. Lesh and the therapist who forgot where the line is
The third story is where the film takes its darkest turn, and honestly the one that will probably stay with you the longest. Dr Peter Lesh (Peter Stickles) is a therapist, married, professional, very composed on the outside and more and more unhinged on the inside. His new client, Lex (Pano Tsaklas), is a mildly famous actor who is trying to put his life back together after a divorce and step carefully into a new relationship.
On paper, this should be a story about Lex working through fame, shame and intimacy in therapy. Instead, the camera slowly slides over to Peter. Session by session, he becomes obsessed with his client. He over-identifies, fantasises, rewrites reality in his head. Those fantasy sequences where the power dynamic flips and Peter imagines himself in control are deeply uncomfortable, but also very effective. You can almost feel him crossing small ethical lines long before anything “big” happens.
What makes this segment work is that Schwab refuses to turn it into pure camp villainy. Peter is not a moustache-twirling monster, he is a very believable example of what happens when someone with real power refuses to look at his own damage. There are moments where you almost sympathise with him, and then you remember he is literally weaponising Lex’s vulnerability. That tension gives this chapter a quiet thriller energy, even though nobody is chasing anyone with a knife.
Talky, low-budget but emotionally honest
Exteriors is clearly an indie production. You can feel the budget in the locations (mostly apartments, offices and backyards) and in the way the film is built out of long conversations rather than big set pieces. Sometimes the dialogue leans into explaining feelings instead of letting us just watch them, and in a few moments you can see the seams where the performances are not all on the same level.
But there is also something very honest about how small the film dares to be. Schwab lets his actors sit in silences, stumble, repeat themselves, circle around the same confession three times before they say it. The second and third stories in particular have a nice physical rhythm – the walk around the house and pool, the clinical calm of the therapist’s office slowly stretching into something unsafe.
If you have seen Schwab’s previous work, you will recognise some faces and emotional tones, and the film works as a kind of side-door sequel to his earlier drama Brotherly Lies – some characters wander in and out, bringing their own history behind them. At the same time, you can absolutely watch Exteriors on its own and just take it as three variations on the same question: what do we do when life offers us one more chance to screw things up in exactly the same way as before?
So, is it worth your time?
If you are looking for glossy, fast-paced queer drama with needle drops every thirty seconds – this is not that film. Exteriors is quieter and more patient. It asks you to lean in, listen to people talk too much and watch them hang themselves with their own patterns. The payoff is not in huge twists, but in small recognitions: the look on someone’s face when they realise they are repeating an old mistake, the way a joke suddenly lands flat because nobody is actually having fun.
For me, the first story is the weakest, a bit too on the nose and occasionally clumsy – but the second and especially the third chapter pull the whole thing up. By the time the credits roll, you feel like you’ve spent an evening eavesdropping on three neighbours whose lives are much less put together than their social media would suggest.
Exteriors (2023): Three Gay Men, One Messy Truth
Exteriors is interested in how gay men hurt each other not just with big betrayals, but with smaller acts of cowardice, projection and silence. And sometimes that is exactly the kind of film you want, not to escape your own patterns, but to see them from the outside and quietly ask yourself: if this were me, would I finally do it differently?
