Sketch

by Mike McGranaghan

Sketch is a film a lot of kids will relate to. It’s an Angel Studios release, although it atypically has no kind of faith message. Instead, writer/director Seth Worley has devised a moving story about how families try to manage emotions during times of grief and loss. He does this through fantasy, allowing the tale to have meaning while still delivering plenty of escapist fun.

Taylor Wyatt (Tony Hale) is a widower who lives with his son Jack (Kue Lawrence) and daughter Amber (Bianca Belle). All of them are in mourning. Amber deals with her feelings by making drawings of scary looking creatures. One day, Jack discovers that a nearby lake has magical properties. Amber’s notebook falls into that lake, and before long, her sketches come to life to terrorize the family. Taylor tries to fend them off with the help of his realtor sister Liz (D’Arcy Carden).

Monsters plaguing a distraught family might sound kind of intense on the surface. The creatures in Sketch are far more humorous than scary. Even though they present a threat to the Wyatts, their designs – which really do resemble a child’s crazy drawings – prevent them from ever being too scary for all but the youngest audience members. The tone here is like a softer version of Gremlins, emphasizing comedic mayhem over outright horror.

Worley’s effects team does a brilliant job of making the monsters look appealingly weird. One of the best is a huge blue cotton ball of a beast with two long legs sticking out the side of its head and a set of googly eyes right in the middle of its face. Elsewhere, a swarm of little red spider-like bugs allows for a thrilling action sequence as they invade the Wyatt house.

The movie’s performances help to sell the core idea that the drawings represent Amber’s uncontrollable anguish. Tony Hale is excellent as the sympathetic father, and Bianca Belle captures Amber’s inner pain credibly. The scene stealer is Kalon Cox as Bowman, Amber’s school rival who gets pulled into the action. At a young age, this kid is already displaying a knack for dropping sarcastic one-liners with skill.

To enjoy the film, you have to be willing to blindly accept a few things, the magic lake, in particular. No explanation is ever given for it, nor is it ever addressed why nobody has discovered it before now. As a first-time feature director, Worley also hasn’t quite developed the cinematic sense of awe that Steven Spielberg brought to E.T. or Joe Dante brought to Explorers. The fantasy elements are fun yet never fully sweep us off our feet.

Thankfully, enough about Sketch works to make it feel-good entertainment for parents and children alike, and it will give families something to talk about afterward, too.

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