Words on Bathroom Walls

A film about a high school student diagnosed with schizophrenia. Adam wants to be a chef. Something happens at school and he is expelled; he enrols at another and decides to tell nobody about his diagnosis. At the same time he joins a trial for a new drug. The formal choice is this: the figures Adam sees appear on screen as characters. Three of them are with him constantly; one calms him, one goads him, one protects him. Alongside them is a voice with no name and no image. So the viewer sees the condition from inside rather than watching it from outside. The second line is his relationship with Maya. Adam tells her nothing, and the film's tension comes from that concealment. The source is Julia Walton's novel. Charlie Plummer plays Adam, Taylor Russell plays Maya and Andy García the priest; the conversations with the school chaplain are the film's easiest passages. A carefully made example for anyone who likes teenage drama and films about mental health. For a viewer looking for clinical accuracy, the film arranges the illness according to the needs of the story and softens at the close as the genre requires.