What Max’s Turtles All the Way Down Gets Right (& Wrong) About Latina Teens With OCD

Aza Holmes (Isabela Merced) can’t stand her own thoughts about bacteria and germs anymore. Despite doing therapy for her diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the 16-year-old high schooler in Max’s new movie Turtles All The Way Down can’t help but go down endless thought-spirals about improbable infections and diseases that feel unbearingly real. Touching anything that might inadvertently infect her sets off thoughts of danger and a desperation to purge any infectious elements from her body through self-harm. It’s exhausting to live in her brain, and it’s taking a toll on her life exactly when she should be figuring out who she is and what she wants out of life. And she is acutely aware of this.

Aza’s story was originally written by John Green in his best-selling novel Turtles All The Way Down. Green’s novel was published in 2017, but in 2024, the film adaptation feels somewhat outdated in its optimistic liberalism and focus on individual responsibility for mental healthcare. Green’s novels speak to a specific time of teenage-focused literature, modeling a specific kind of hopefulness that now feels somewhat falsified and exaggerated as young people across the United States righteously call for a ceasefire in Gaza. As Green has recently come under fire by young people for taking too long to speak on the conflict, and later referring to it as a “war” rather than a “genocide” in a social media post, the dissonance between Green’s late 2010’s stories and a young audience that is fighting for a better world has become painfully obvious. Something in the film feels a little off, like the world it exists in is almost obsolete. 

However, it’s essential to understand that a film is more than its most powerful and most famous collaborator — though the film doesn’t let us forget Green, featuring him in a quick cameo that, again, feels outdated and empty. Despite these caveats and the liberalism that seems to seep into every Green novel adaptation, Turtles All The Way Down still depicts an interesting story about a Latina teenager with OCD, her struggles with mental health treatment, and the challenges she has to navigate when trying to manage mental illness symptoms. Merced delivers a physically and emotionally challenging performance that depicts emotional breakdowns, self-harm, and the difficulties of living with OCD. 

As someone who has struggled with mental illness in early adulthood and every year since, Aza’s story struck me as relatable, complex, and realistic. Aza’s central conflict revolves around her desire to be normal like the other kids in her high school. At the same time, Aza also questions the treatment she receives for her OCD and anxiety disorder. Though she wants to enjoy her teenage life, Aza resents her need for therapy and often refuses to take her medication for fear of losing herself and her personality to the numbing effects of psychiatric medication. 

It’s an internal conflict that often leaks into Aza’s external life. She hates the way her thought spirals disrupts her ability to date her love interest Davis (Felix Mallard). When Aza finally kisses Davis — after much internal dialogue and thought spirals about being contaminated by his germs — Aza freaks out about the possibility that he infected her with a serious disease. Her internal monologue swings from obsessive to self-hatred: Why can’t she be normal enough to just enjoy her first kiss with a handsome billionaire? Why can’t she live as a teenage girl who is falling in love for the first time? The interruptions her brain causes to her life make her hate her brain, but she still fears that taking her psychiatric medication will numb her out and make her into someone she is not. 

This is a common worry for people who suffer from any kind of mental illness, and it’s the first time I have seen a teenage Latina navigate this issue on screen. Mental illness can often cause existential self-questioning that can result in painful but necessary conclusions about our own thought patterns and behaviors, and it’s significant to see a Latina pondering these questions. The face of teenage mental illness on TV and film — particularly for contamination OCD and/or generalized anxiety disorder — is usually white and male, so Merced is delivering some very needed representation. 

Additionally, Aza’s storyline is honest, exploring the ways mental illness can result in self-centeredness and selfishness. It’s tiring to see narratives around mental illness that majorly focus on depression and suicide and how all we need is community that will care for us in times of need. The reality is that mental illness requires difficult and intense internal and external work so we can survive the symptoms and thought-patterns caused by said mental illness. And it might not be fair, but ultimately, each of us is responsible for working on ourselves and managing our symptoms. 

Turtles All The Way Down gets to this difficult truth. Through Aza’s relationship with her best friend Daisy (Cree), a Star Wars nerd with a lot of personality, the film explores how Aza’s OCD and anxiety affects the people closest to her and how these relationships can motivate mentally ill people to work on mitigating their symptoms to live a better and fuller life. Aza’s journey is one of self-discovery, but it also exposes how much work and dedication mental health can require, which is ultimately a really good example for any young Latine person watching. 

It’s okay to struggle, it’s okay to have doubts about yourself, and it’s okay to be mentally ill. But there are also reliable ways to manage symptoms and resources to cope with your thought patterns. It’s essential to do internal and external work to keep yourself mentally stable so you can live a full life despite your intrusive thoughts. And that’s not an easy thing to do; it takes time and dedication to pull yourself out of the hole mental illness pushes you into. 

At the end of the film, with the help of Daisy and her mother (played by the incredible Judy Reyes), Aza reaches the conclusion that she needs to have resources in place to be able to survive with OCD and anxiety. Therapy and taking her medication regularly are habits she has to adhere to if she wants to have significant relationships and experiences in her life without being disturbed and interrupted by her intrusive thoughts of contamination. The only way out is through — and I hope young Latines watching this film can take that from the film as a lesson. 

I have no idea where any of the main characters’ families are originally from. This felt like  colorblind casting, so Aza’s heritage and/or ethnicity wasn’t mentioned or relevant to the story. I think if this had been fleshed out at all, it would have added to the story. 

There isn’t any Spanish speaking at all in the film, so there’s really no code-switching to rate. In terms of representation, this was a let down.  

The two main characters were Latina, but there wasn’t much diversity beyond that. Some of the secondary characters are Black and brown, but they don’t play a significant part in the film. I’m grading it a C because I do think it’s important to have mentally ill Latinas represented on screen. But, as aforementioned, Aza’s Latine identity wasn’t mentioned at all, so I have mixed feelings about it. 

There wasn’t a diversity of sexualities in the film at all, but I’m giving this film extra points for having mainly Latina women as the protagonists of the story.

Films and TV shows about mental illness are usually about white men and boys, so it was refreshing to see a narrative that focused on the struggles of a Latina teenager. The over-the-top focus on the mental illness of men and boys — particularly when it comes to diagnosis like OCD, ADHD, and autism — has resulted in the underdiagnosis of neurodivergent girls and women. In this sense, I think the film does a good job in portraying a different kind of mentally ill teenager.

I think the film explores some interesting issues, but it still feels like outdated storytelling. I think teens and tweens might enjoy this with their parents.