Words on Bathroom Walls (2020)

Words on Bathroom Walls review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

Words on Bathroom Walls seems as though it would fall far too easily in the sub-genre of teen romances amid disabilities, harkening to the likes of Five Feet Apart and Everything Everything. However, this film tries to tackle a trickier subject to place on the screen by giving our struggling protagonist schizophrenia. It’s quite the challenge to portray that kinda conflicting mental hardship on the screen. And while this film does stumble here and there, relying on a bit too much theatrics to illustrate the internal conflict, it’s an effective take at being affectionate on the subject.

The teen in question is Adam (Charlie Plummer), struggling with voices in his head and wild visions of dark visions and characters he’s created to conquer his worst thoughts. Thankfully, the film doesn’t settle for this being his only hangup as we soon learn of his troubled home life. His dad left him at an early age, forcing him to cook meals for his saddened mom. Her mom later finds a new husband, which Adam is none too thrilled about. The voices grow stronger and it isn’t long before Adam finds himself so unstable his parents aren’t sure where he can thrive with his cooking talent.

Adam tries to make things work with a new medication and a new school, this one Catholic. While there, he attracts the eye of the conspiring and judgy Maya (Taylor Russell), a student who deals with students’ papers as a self-described Bernie Madoff of the hallway business. Things start to take shape as Maya discovers Adam’s cooking and they slowly start to connect, just in time for school prom no less. The good news is that with all this going on, it appears the voices are leaving Adam’s head. The bad news is that may only just be the calm before the storm.

Adam’s schizophrenia is given a surreal angle that at times took me out of the film. Whenever the dark voice creeps into Adam’s mind, it’s as though we’re slipping out of a teen drama and into an X-Men film. The voice is deep, loud, and darkly ominous. Its presence is given the form of a dark gas or blob, depending on where it lurks. Combatting the voice is Adam’s posse of an enforcer, a pixie, and a laid-back sexy guy, all which I suppose represent a different element of his psyche. One of Adam’s first encounters with the darkness we witness is in a science glass where his vision is that of glass and gas swirling around the classroom in a display of CGI-crafted carnage only he can see. If he reacts to it, he’ll cause an accident or others will discover he is crazy. Despite how overblown much of this appears, it does its job of generating the fear within Adam about being open with himself.

This is the kinda teen drama that is compelling on paper but never feels all quite there. Adam seems to break the fourth wall in bookending segments of him describing his life and his progression. This is common for this type of film, but it seems as though it’s posed as him talking to a psychiatrist. Adam’s visions are trippy and sometimes they’re rather effective, as when Adam’s mom delivers some news he considers bad and a blur of movement washes over him. Other times they’re just a bit too much that do a drastic shift in tone. For instance, Adam takes an almost curious quirkiness in watching the Catholic school principal’s office set ablaze within his imagination, but seems to quake and quiver other times his inner voices pop into the conversation. And though Adam and Maya have some cute moments together, they seem far too few and understated.

While I was nearly checked out of the film by the second act, the third act thankfully brings a tad bit of subversion and genuine warmth towards acceptance and love that Adam has for others. I particularly dug how there’s a bit of surprise with Walton Goggins playing the new father who plays against his usual chaotic self to really be the secretly sweet person of the picture. There are a few cliches here and there of the genre that I more or less expected, but there’s also a soothing nature to the story that makes it a little more unique and palatable than most films that merely settle.