Words on Bathroom Walls Parent Guide

Adam (Charlie Plummer) and his mom, Beth (Molly Parker) have been a team since Adam’s dad took off years ago. But life for Adam is getting more complicated by the second: Beth just brought home her new boyfriend, Paul (Walton Goggins), and more worryingly, Adam is now having alarming visual and auditory hallucinations. Following an incident at his high school and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, Adam finds himself on an experimental new medication and enrolled in a distant Catholic school. With the help of the startingly presumptive valedictorian, Maya (Taylor Russell), Adam manages to keep up with his coursework – but his medication is starting to have some strange side-effects, and keeping his illness hidden from his classmates is becoming increasingly difficult…

Schizophrenia has been given a truly horrifying reputation, and movies haven’t helped. Films like Split portray individuals with schizophrenia as violent maniacs with a taste for murder. Unsurprisingly, this type of sensational portrayal make things worse for people struggling with this neurological disorder. People diagnosed with schizophrenia (about 1 percent of the global population) need support and understanding, not vilification.

Miraculously, Words on Bathroom Walls is strongly in favor of support and understanding. Nearly everyone in Adam’s life is concerned and nurturing, especially his mother, Maya, and the school’s priest, played by Andy Garcia. The movie manages to be supportive and serious without being dreary or dark – Adam is a fun character, and the other characters are well written and funny enough to keep this from being a dirge.

Young adult movies about mental illness tend to have some content issues – see Perks of Being a Wallflower or Donnie Darko. Apart from the profanity (not too surprising when your brain starts seeing things that aren’t there), there are almost no serious issues with this movie.

That said, this isn’t a film for everybody. The subject matter is difficult and potentially triggering for some viewers. But if you think you can handle it, this is a genuinely thoughtful and sensitive movie that can encourage teenagers to view their atypical peers with understanding and compassion. That might be worth the price of the ticket.