Sketch (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I haven't been this blissfully surprised by a film in a long time, perhaps not since The Wild Robot. Writer/director Seth Worley taps deep into emotional reserves and imaginative creativity in Sketch, a family film that pushes aesthetic boundaries even as it doubles down on tasteful, mature themes. In concept and scope, it feels like Jumanji or Bridge to Terabithia, and in aesthetic style, it feels like a mixture of Detective Pikachu and Velvet Buzzsaw. I was reminded of A Monster Calls multiple times during this viewing experience, and I eagerly intend another such screening.

Taylor, a middle-aged widower (an exceptional Tony Hale), prepares to sell his family's house yet is having trouble with his children. Jack (Kue Lawrence), eager to please and step up to the challenge of a suddenly smaller family, wants to help and fix everything while repressing his own grief and needs. Amber (Bianca Belle), younger, is mostly quiet, preferring to channel her brainpower and idle hands into drawing -- hence the title -- various creatures and monsters of increasingly frightening nature -- again, hence the title -- and crafting elaborate mythologies around her imagined enemies. Perhaps it's easier to draw our monsters and cover them in glitter than it is to, say, meditate on the death of your mother or confront your bullies at school. Art is a therapeutic tool, and this film is one determined to help you work through some things.

Jack, one day, discovers a pond that can fix broken things and becomes obsessed with putting his mother's ashes into the water, hoping she will return to life and fix their broken family. One thing leads to another, Amber appears, and her notebook ends up quite soaked in the water. Soon enough, the brightly colored and bloodthirsty monsters of her soul pour out of the forest, stalking around town and causing mayhem. Eventually, the family -- including Taylor's sister Liz (D'Arcy Carden, in a thankless role she absolutely slays), who can more clearly see the psychological dynamics at play and verbalizes the theme of lamentation and grieving -- must band together to fight the monsters and restore normalcy.

The deeply sentimental and heartrending story had me in tears more than once, and it's a beautiful accomplishment in both design and execution here. Yet I'd be lying if I said that's the best part of this film; indeed, this is a rare case of me appreciating the "action" and effects even more than the story or writing. Amber's creatures, when brought to life, are so brilliantly conceived and rendered that I repeatedly had to pinch myself from shouting out "Yes!" in the screening when a new one appeared. There's a giant round blue one with googly eyes that rains glitter, reddish-orange multi-legged "eyeders" made out of powdery chalk, and a dark, hooded silent creature with Amber's creativity and a bitter axe to grind. 

As silly as these creations could have been, the film designers make them feel tactile and consequential. Not unlike the cartoonish creatures in Detective Pikachu, these are clearly designed appropriately to the initial drawings by Amber, yet palpably rendered to feel believable and dangerous. We are right there with the kids in our awe and shock when the monsters strike, and it's just as funny as it is alarming. Much like kids playing pretend and getting too "into it," this film literalizes the experience of seeing your imagination manifesting before you. Notably, the film feels shot, more often than not, as if it were a horror film, underscored with music filled with dread and slowly roving cinematography that, had this been rated R, would have had me gripping my armrests in fear. The authenticity and bravery on display hold true for the screenplay and the acting, which coalesce into a rollicking adventure through an emotional gauntlet course with plenty of absurdist insight, slapstick comedy, and even innocent potty humor, so that nobody in the audience feels left out of the fun.