THE STORY – When a young girl’s sketchbook falls into a strange pond, her drawings come to life-chaotic, real and on the loose. As the towns descends into chaos, her family must reunite and stop the monsters they never meant to unleash.
THE CAST – Tony Hale, D’Arcy Carden, Bianca Belle, Kue Lawrence & Kalon Cox
THE TEAM – Seth Worley (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 92 Minutes
As a movie-loving parent, there’s a particular joy in sharing your favorite films with your kids. That happiness only deepens as they grow older and become mature enough to appreciate stories meant for more grown-up audiences. There’s also something special about introducing them to movies that might scare them just a little. Not because it’s cruel, but because those scares can make them feel a bit more grown-up too. That’s part of what makes a movie like “Sketch” so special. It’s not just full of thrills; it also encourages younger viewers to engage with complex emotions in a story about grief. With a PG rating, it’s wide open for kids of all ages, but adults will absolutely connect as well.
Writer-director Seth Worley makes a striking debut with “Sketch,” an unbelievably creative first feature bursting with energy, even as it plays within familiar genre frameworks. Taylor (Tony Hale), a widowed father, is struggling to help his two kids, Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence), process the loss of their mother. Hoping a fresh start will help, he begins packing away family photos and enlists his sister (D’Arcy Carden) to help sell the house. Amber, meanwhile, seems to be acting out. Her teacher discovers a notebook filled with disturbing drawings, creepy creatures, some covered in blood, others decked out in glitter and googly eyes. Though Amber tries to keep it private, her teacher urges Taylor to let her keep drawing, seeing it as a healthy outlet for grief. Meanwhile, Jack has his own mysterious discovery. After a fall in the woods, he cracks his phone and cuts his hand, he stumbles upon a strange pond that miraculously heals both. Intrigued, he considers putting his mother’s ashes in the water but accidentally drops Amber’s notebook into the pond instead, unleashing her imagined monsters on the town.
And these aren’t just any monsters. The creature designs are wildly inventive, wholly original, and deeply unsettling, yet totally believable as creations from a child’s imagination. There’s one Amber calls “The Bloodeater,” who “eats blood and pukes the blood back onto people.” Another standout is “The Tattler,” a tiny thing that sounds an alarm to alert a towering blind creature where to strike. Despite their horror, the monsters maintain their crayon-drawn, glitter-adorned look, like scribbles come to life. Worley’s VFX background is evident in how convincingly he brings these creatures into the real world, even on what must have been a limited budget. Watching them wreak havoc is pure fun and surprisingly terrifying for the characters caught in their path.
The setup feels straight out of the Spielberg playbook, but Worley makes it his own. Even with its fantastical premise, “Sketch” smartly keeps its scope small. There’s no look at worldwide fallout or government conspiracies, just a family trying to survive. The focus stays on the kids’ attempts to escape and their father’s desperate search to find them. Through it all, the emotional throughline of grieving their mother stays powerfully intact. As Taylor races to save his children, he also confronts how he’s fallen short in helping them process their loss. The monster mayhem never overshadows the heart of the story; it enhances it.
“Sketch” perfectly threads the needle in the far-too-rare genre of family-friendly horror. It’s genuinely scary at times, enough that I had to double-check it really is rated PG (it is), but also enormously fun. The kids get plenty of hilarious moments while outsmarting or fighting off the monsters, and Worley shows a real talent for writing believable dialogue. With strong performances across the board, especially from Belle and Hale, “Sketch” resonates with kids and adults alike. It’s precisely the kind of movie that can expand a child’s understanding of what movies can be. Creepy, funny, and unexpectedly moving, “Sketch” is one of the best family-friendly horror films in recent memory.
