Review: Words on Bathroom Walls Gives Schizophrenia the YA Treatment

Hollywood’s more egregious representations of mental illness tend to either posit love and emotional support as virtual panaceas for the burdens fallen on afflicted individuals, or tie illness into narratives of tortured genius, wherein brilliance comes at the cost of unabated internal anguish. Thor Freudenthal’s Words on Bathroom Walls does a bit of both as it interweaves a generic YA romantic tale of love and acceptance with that of a young, aspiring chef struggling with the symptoms of schizophrenia.

The film opens just prior to Adam (Charlie Plummer) experiencing his first full-blown schizophrenic episode during his senior year of high school, resulting in him accidentally burning a fellow student in chemistry class and getting expelled. Early on, Freudenthal uses special effects to convey Adam’s inner world of psychosis and wish fulfillments, with the chemistry classroom appearing to swirl around as if caught in a cyclone and, later, Adam envisioning the office of the principal at his soon-to-be new school slowly going up in flames. Soon after, the filmmaker leans heavily on more simplistic and familiar cinematic tropes frequently associated with mental illness, from a deep, haunting internal voiceover that literalizes the teen’s deepest, darkest fears, to a trio of hallucinations in the form of easily recognizable character types—a free-spirited hipster girl (AnnaSophia Robb), a horny teenager (Devon Bostick), and a rugged, bat-carrying tough guy (Lobo Sebastian)—who are on hand to explicate every doubt, anxiety, and desire that runs through Adam’s mind.

It’s a sanitized, and occasionally distastefully humorous, presentation of schizophrenia that renders much of Adam’s psychological torment and confusion without ambiguity. Such methods of illustrating the effects of schizophrenia are also evident in Adam’s recurring direct-to-camera addresses, supposedly directed to one of his psychiatrists, and which offer blunt, succinct summaries of precisely how his illness and the drug are affecting him throughout Words on Bathroom Walls. Adam’s fears dominate the narrative, but it’s the filmmakers’ fear of nuance that make these particular sequences so leaden.

Once Adam starts to suffer from the side effects of an experimental drug he’s taking—such as a loss of taste and uncontrollable shaking, which affects his ability to cook—the film taps into some of the messier realities of living with mental illness. The strain that Adam’s various drug therapies and his adherence to them takes not only on him, but on his mother, Beth (Molly Parker), and new stepfather, Paul (Walton Goggins), is particularly well-drawn. These sequences lend a poignancy and depth to the film’s otherwise one-dimensional portrait of the challenges of coping with mental health issues, particularly in their tendency to show Beth and Paul as more than flawless, endlessly compassionate parental figures.

Similarly gripped by conflicting feelings is Maya (Taylor Russell), the star student at Adam’s new school who immediately warms up to him. Russell brings a warmth and low-key naturalism to a character that unfortunately veers too close to the romantic savior archetype, and her initial gravitation toward the awkward Adam and her unflinching devotion to him, despite her having no clue that he’s diagnosed with any illness until late in the film, reek of the extremely idealistic notions of young love that plague many a YA adaptation.

Much of the film is regrettably taken up with predictably tracing the evolution of Maya and Adam’s relationship, with the precocious teens spouting platitudes of love and devotion that sound straight out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. The filmmakers attempt to lend this relationship some additional dramatic heft by mirroring Adam’s unwillingness to share the details of his affliction with Maya with Maya’s desire to hide the fact that she’s poor from Adam, but the correlation is far too imbalanced to hold much weight.

Ultimately, Adam’s schizophrenia is given relatively short shrift, and while Words on Bathroom Walls touches on the erratic and precarious nature of the disease, it ends on an unearned note of optimism that repeats the same misguided psychological notion found in countless films before it. In minimizing the fundamental importance of medication and rigorous therapy, the film naïvely places the onus of recovery on the afflicted individual, suggesting that a change in attitude may be the antidote to serious mental health conditions.