Fearing a psychotic break, Paul takes away the knives any would-be chef requires, and seems eager to put the boy under professional care Adam is convinced Paul wants to get rid of him so he can have Beth to himself. Though she puts all her energy into researching possible treatments for him, Beth has gotten serious about a boyfriend, Walton Goggins’ Paul, who seems less sympathetic.
The priest is a welcome adult presence as Adam begins feeling less than supported at home. While a conceit in which Adam explains his travails to an offscreen psychiatrist is slightly clumsy - by the film’s end, he’s clearly just talking to the viewer - the plot offers a substitute foil as well: Adam is an unbeliever, but finds himself comforted in the school’s confessional by Father Patrick (Andy Garcia), a sympathetic man who seems relieved to have something to talk about other than his teen flock’s guilt over masturbation.
But he manages to get her hired as his after-school tutor, and after a bit of “I’m a more impressive nerd than you” one-upsmanship, the two click convincingly. “You’re kinda weird, are you special-needs?” she asks him at first. That’s just what he does with Maya (Taylor Russell, of Waves), a self-confident scholarship kid, likely to be valedictorian, who gets paid to write papers for her better-off classmates. Finally taking an experimental medication that seems to quash his hallucinations, he intends to keep his head down and pass for normal.
When one such episode leads to ostracization at his school and a string of new schools don’t work out, Adam winds up stuck at a Catholic school that agrees not to share his diagnosis with other students. While the imagery may be familiar from horror films, it’s a potent announcement of his hallucinations’ ability to trigger real-world violence. If these three cutesy characters seem a too-tidy way to represent a distressingly untidy inner experience, there’s another presence as well: a dark voice that whispers menacingly offscreen or from shadows, sometimes accompanied by wisps or billows of black smoke.
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