TOM (Tom Payne) handsome and intelligent has been awarded a fellowship at Colombia University. At just nineteen he is popular and caring and has everything going for him but one thing, his father, WOODS (Tommy Flanagan). Forty something with schizophrenic tendencies and an unquenchable thirst for cigarettes and alcohol, Woods is a complex character who is sometimes repulsive, other times sensitive and loving. Their home is the city, where Woods frequents only the darkest of places. Barking at Trees is a moving, tragic and sometime humorous portrayal of a man's heartbreak and loss, the love of his two boys, their love for each other and their struggle against the system.