SKETCH (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Sketch, Angel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 4, 2025

Sketch is a peculiar film about a child's imagination literally running wild and grief. The central gimmick of the screenplay by director Seth Worley, based on his previous short "Darker Colors," is that a girl's drawings come to life and wreak havoc on the little town where she lives. That conceit is fun in a distracting sort of way that almost reflects how its main characters are trying to distract themselves from the real devastation behind this story.

That would be the death of the wife of Taylor (Tony Hale) and the mother of his two children, Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence). They don't talk about her, except in a general way, because it's too painful for the widower, while his kids are following their father's lead. What else are they supposed to do? It's not as if children are prepared for that kind of loss so early in life. Most adult children probably aren't ready for it, either.

The setup here may seem quite the internal contrast. On one hand, here's an adventure tale about a group of kids, as well as a couple of adults, running from and ultimately trying to fight some giant monsters, brought to life from Amber's drawings by a magical pond. On the other, here is a sincere, thoughtful, and occasionally wise exploration of grief, as well as how the way people respond to it can divide a family in ways they would never imagine or anticipate.

Worley has devised a considerable narrative and thematic challenge for himself with his debut feature, and if the film's ideas and tone come across as clunky at times, its heart and mind are certainly in the right place. That means something.

The whole of the story is mostly framed around Amber, who is feeling the death of her mother in a way she either can't or, because her father and brother aren't talking about it, won't put into words. Instead, she escapes into drawing, as she has done for most of her young life so far. The girl's older drawings are of fanciful creatures and fantastical roles for her family members. Her new ones are, well, quite the opposite, as her regular bully Bowman (Kalon Cox) discovers after he says a few too many mean things to her on the school bus.

This latest sketched creation is of shadowy figure with a long blade connected to the boy. Everyone's a bit concerned about drawing, and Amber's assertion that the entity isn't cutting Bowman in half but is stabbing him through the gut doesn't help much. The school counselor (played by Nadia Benavides) has some more sympathetic points to make about the drawings being an outlet for repressed emotions or ones that could be far more damaging if displayed in another way. She gives Amber a notebook exclusively for more drawings like it.

The film does eventually get to its gimmick, but smartly, Worley is in no rush to get there. After all, Amber's drawings, which become the driving force of plot, have an emotional foundation to establish and examine, too. A few scenes at home, in which Taylor evades the subject of his wife any time she's mentioned and Jack keeps stepping in to "fix" what's wrong with the family, make all of that plainly clear. Taylor has also taken down all of his wife's photos in the house, has put all of her things—not to mention her ashes—into a suitcase, and is trying to sell the house with the help of his sister Liz (D'Arcy Carden).

This time is well-spent, because, as soon as Jack discovers the magical pond in a forest where his mother used to take walks, the story becomes a different thing. The poor boy, who realizes the water in the pond can repair his broken cellphone and heal a cut on his hand, decides to bring his mother's remains to the pond, and not knowing what her brother is doing, Amber tries to stop him. Her sketchbook falls into the water, and soon enough, the woods, the house, and the surrounding area become populated with her monstrous creations.

On the family-friendly creature feature front, these monsters are ingenious things with distinct personalities and behaviors, while also toeing a fine line between deviously cute for the adults and just scary enough for the kids in the audience. One, for example, is a massive blue blob with long legs, adorned with snakes for toes, and that usually sleeps—until it terrorizes the kids in the bus. Another is a weird little guy called a "tattler," which extends flashing flaps and sounds an alarm for an actual threat: a towering mouth with rows of pointed teeth. Taylor later has to put up with spider-like things that steal all of his stuff, which Amber invents after her father takes away her art supplies.

The visual effects are equally creative, because the beasts look like drawings using different mediums, like crayon and chalk and glitter, enlarged and set in scribbly motion. If action and humor take over once the monsters arrive, the film does possess some neat sequences (It's funny to watch these monsters explode into dust or melt away with some soapy water) and decent, if repetitive, jokes.

Anyway, Worley has so confidently and compassionately laid the groundwork for the emotional core of this story by then that the distraction is almost a welcome reprieve. Sketch has a solid foundation for both of its distinct modes, and there are some worthy lessons here—not only about dealing with loss and confronting grief, but also about how creative endeavors can be a healthy way to channel the good and the bad of life into something beautiful or safely scary.

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