Worth: $18.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Charlie Plummer, Taylor Russell, Andy Garcia, AnnaSophia Robb, Molly Parker, Walton Goggins
Intro:
In competition with Babyteeth for best YA film of the year…
In competition with Babyteeth for best YA film of the year, Words on Bathroom Walls’ depiction of mental illness, in this case schizophrenia, is one anchored in making the audience step into the shoes of high schooler and budding chef Adam (Charlie Plummer), both textually and visually.
Visually, Michael Goi’s cinematography, combined with the effects work, results in a surreal, psychedelic, and even frightening realisation of Adam’s hallucinations. The idea of personifying some of them is a bit of a fumble (even if the casting of AnnaSophia Robb is nigh-on perfect), but it largely exists to put a human face on an unfortunately-misunderstood condition.
Nick Naveda’s scripting adds to that with a shockingly refreshing take on mental health strategies. Over its near-two-hour run time, Words on Bathroom Walls covers family, medication, therapy, romantic partnership, zen in the art of cuisine, even religion, as means of support, and while the breadth is already remarkable, it tops that by treating each with absolute clarity.
Mental health isn’t a one-and-done, despite the Hollywood norm, and the film acknowledges the lifelong and complicated process of dealing with such conditions, without treating that like a death sentence. Showing solidarity with the classic social punching bag of ‘man who mutters to himself on the bus’ shouldn’t be this much of an anomaly.
Of course, to paraphrase Adam, he has an illness but he’s not the illness itself. And thankfully, the film manages to follow through on that. Between his romance with Maya (Escape Room’s Taylor Russell), his frictions with his parents (Molly Parker and Walton Goggins), his love of cooking, and even his bonding with Father Patrick (Andy García), all the talk of destigmatising mental illness is acted on by fleshing out Adam into a proper three-dimensional character that the audience wants to see come out on top.
Words On Bathroom Walls could be triggering for some audiences (and that’s not in the facetious way that the term gets overused in nowadays; the film can get genuinely confronting), but that serves as a testament to how effective it is as an empathetic depiction of mental health that doesn’t fetishize or condescend the reality of it. It’s a heartfelt reminder that those struggling with the darkness aren’t alone.
