Processing grief via art proves perilous in Sketch, a family adventure that, to its benefit, isn’t afraid to be sad or scary—and, better yet, still knows how to be funny.
Blending tones with cleverness and confidence, writer/director/editor Seth Worley’s feature directorial debut (which premiered at January’s Sundance Film Festival) deftly balances wonder, terror, and adolescent absurdity throughout its tale of a young girl whose sorrow-fueled drawings come to calamitous life. No matter its title, it’s a full-bodied triumph bursting with humor, tenderness, and imagination. And moreover, it’s the rare film to authentically channel the spirit of Amblin Entertainment’s ’80s children’s classics without resorting to narrative or aesthetic mimicry.
Sketch, which hits theaters Aug. 6, sets an amusingly ominous tone from an initial image of “HELP!” scrawled in mist on a school bus window and the subsequent sight of elementary schooler Bowman (Kalon Cox) staring in shock at a drawing made by classmate Amber (Bianca Belle)—all of it shot, scored, and edited as if this were a spooky sequence from a big-screen thriller.
From eerie zooms into close-up to jarring cuts and suggestive framing, Worley’s use of horror and suspense techniques are playfully tongue-in-cheek—or at least, they are to a point, since they do establish a suitably menacing mood that’s in keeping with his material’s segue from character drama to action-oriented fantasy in which kids are compelled to battle creatures of their own tortured design.
The drawing which raised Bowman’s eyebrows is of a monster strangling him to bloody death, and it earns Amber a meeting with her principal Dr. Land (Nadia Benavides). He explains to the girl—in front of her dad Taylor (Tony Hale), who’s been called into the office—that though her latest artwork is inappropriate, it’s good that she’s getting her feelings out on paper rather than bottling them up inside.
This echoes Taylor’s belief that “You can’t control your inbox but you can control your outbox.” Still, Amber’s unhappiness is too great to be mollified by platitudes. At home, she squabbles with her father and her older brother Jack (Kue Lawrence), resulting in the shattering of the family’s special plate. This is not a cheery household, and the reason for everyone’s misery—the kids’ mother has recently passed away—is revealed when Amber and Jack ask their dad if they’re orphans, leading to a funny-sad back-and-forth about the technical term for those who only have one living parent.
Walking in the nearby woods, Jack trips and falls, cutting his hand and sending his phone careening into a pond. Jack retrieves the shattered device from the water and, shortly thereafter, discovers that it’s totally fixed, as is his wounded palm. A test with the clan’s shattered plate confirms what he suspected: the pond can repair anything that’s broken. This gives him the Pet Sematary-ish idea to resurrect his mother by placing her ashes in the pond.
Before he can perform this magic trick, however, Amber confronts him and, during their scuffle, accidentally drops her sketchbook into the supernatural pool, thereby causing her creations to become real—a significant problem given that her drawings as of late have skewed grotesque and hostile, full of unholy fiends whose main interests are theft, destruction, and murder.
Before all hell breaks loose, Sketch establishes its dramatic dynamics with compassion and wit; Worley’s script is marked by sharp, hilarious dialogue that makes even its heaviest passages hum.
Equal parts morose and droll, Hale’s excellent performance is emblematic of the proceedings as a whole. He’s well-paired with D’Arcy Carden as Taylor’s real-estate agent sister Liz, who’s trying to sell her brother’s house—an undertaking complicated by his habit of interrupting showings—and is dismayed by the fact that he’s erased any trace of his late wife from his residence. As the film’s adult half, they’re a charmingly exasperated, panicked, and forlorn duo.
The genuine stars of Sketch, however, are its pre-teen cast. Belle is both sullen and antagonistic as Amber, albeit not to an off-putting or monotonous degree; her solid performance positions the girl’s fury as an outgrowth of her crushing heartache. Lawrence, meanwhile, casts Jack as a smart and brave boy who’s desperate to mend himself and his loved ones, even to a reckless degree. Together, they’re two sides of a despondent coin, and yet the film never wallows in pain, finding constant ways to keep things spry and silly.
To that end, it’s blessed with a phenomenal supporting turn from Box, who’s such a riot as Bowman—a mouthy pest never lacking for a chuckle-worthy retort—that he frequently steals the show with one expertly delivered one-liner after another.
Pitted against Amber’s fearsome flights of fancy—including a two-legged blue beast named Dave, tiny eye-spiders known as “Iders,” and an evil Amber who wants to kill them all—Amber, Jack, and Bowman strive to escape peril and devise a monster-slaying weapon they can make real in the pond. Sketch’s set pieces are elevated by assured and dexterous direction and equally inventive visual effects; Amber’s animated crayon and Sharpie drawings shimmer like they’ve leapt off the page.
If her illustrations sometimes seem a tad physically divorced from their surroundings (as during a swarming Iders attack), their habit of disintegrating in a puff of chalky smoke when stomped or smushed is a nice touch. There’s a consistency of vision to the film’s make-believe, as well as a sense of awe and dread that’s as potent as its comedy.
Sketch has style and flair and, at 92 minutes, keeps its foot on the gas. Despite its skirmishes and chases, though, it never loses sight of the angst and anger at the heart of its story, culminating with a slam-bang finale in which facing one’s despair turns out to be the surest means of transcending it.
Moving without being mawkish, and jokey without being glib, it’s precisely the sort of movie that, in an earlier era, would have been destined for a long theatrical life. In today’s blockbuster-or-bust environment, that fate may be less likely, but regardless, Worley’s maiden film is a winner cut from a Spielbergian cloth, and the best all-ages cinematic offering of the summer.
