Rating: PG | Runtime: 92 minutes
Release Date: August 6th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Angel Studios
Director(s): Seth Worley
Writer(s): Seth Worley

I give you my covenant.

Would you rather your daughter draw an admittedly dark picture of a monster stabbing a classmate hard in the stomach or actually do the stabbing herself? It’s not really a question, right? And yet the notion that kids need creative outlets to vent their frustrations and rage is way too new a concept. So new that I still assumed Amber (Bianca Belle) was going to get in trouble with the school and her father (Tony Hale’s Taylor) after the target of her ire (Kalon Cox’s Bowman) tattles. To instead have the guidance counselor defend her actions and provide a notebook in which Amber can exorcize her demons in privacy proves quite profound. It’s high tide we finally let our children feel again.

Writer/director Seth Worley’s Sketch is a breath of fresh air in this way because it’s always providing its kids the benefit of the doubt and its adults room to rethink their otherwise punishment-based impulses. Just because taking away Amber’s imagination leaves her with only literal violence doesn’t mean you ignore what’s happening, though. You monitor her pain and supply an avenue towards safe communication to try and work through it together. Unless, as is the case with Taylor, you’re also reeling from the same tragedy. It isn’t therefore Amber’s suffering that he’s ignoring as much as it is his own. That’s why he’s removed all of his late wife’s photos and put their house up for sale.

So, when Jack (Kue Lawrence) stumbles across a pond that inexplicably “fixes” whatever he submerges in its water (his cracked phone and cut hands), he believes he might just be able to play the hero for both his sister and dad. He tests it out first, of course. Still on inanimate objects, but enough to give him the confidence that bringing his mother back is possible. (Un)fortunately for everyone involved, Jack is waylaid in his attempt by Amber’s curiosity. She follows him to the pond, almost falls in, and drops her notebook with all its insanely inventive yet nightmarish creations. So, more than just “fixing” things, it’s soon revealed this pond can also bestow physical form to Amber’s ideas.

It’s a wild conceit that works because of the trust Worley gives to his characters. Strip away the impossible and you still get to the heart of a message wherein the person everyone thinks needs help (Amber) is conversely the one person who doesn’t. Because where she’s manifesting her feelings through art, Taylor and Jack are repressing them via that old toxically masculine chestnut of one simply “getting over it.” That’s the foundation upon which a giant glittery blue monster named Dave and tiny red thieving Eye-ders can accelerate the need for introspective self-reflection. You can patiently avoid the truth by telling yourself Amber will be okay someday, but you must escape death-dealing monsters now.

The synopsis isn’t lying when it compares Sketch to family favorites like Jumanji and Grenlins. This adventure through the emotions of grief is very much in that vein both in its imaginatively dark fantasy world-building and its heartfelt empathy between unlikely companions banding together to achieve a common goal. I’m not only talking about Amber and Jack resigning themselves to bringing Bowman into the fold despite him only wanting to fabricate a big gun with smaller ones attached from the pond. It’s also about Taylor finally opening up to his real estate agent sister’s (D’Arcy Carden’s Liz) obvious worry that he’s moving way too fast when it comes to his desire for normalcy in abnormal times.

There’s big Honey, I Shrunk the Kids energy too as the perspective shifts between the trio of tweens and adult duo. The former are thrust into a life or death scenario stripping away the desire to maintain some false need for childhood innocence while the latter are desperate to find them, protect them, and learn how to stop letting things get so bad that they’d accidentally trigger an apocalyptic event of crayon wax and chalk dust. And rather than cheat by allowing the “responsible” party to save the day, Worley recognizes that a parent’s job is support. Taylor has his own quest of self-discovery and self-correction. Children are a resilient enough bunch to figure things out on their own.

It won’t be a walk in the park, though. Not with monsters driven by the rage of a young girl screaming so she won’t drown in her debilitating sorrow. That these beasts retain the attributes of their artistic medium (as well as the shortcomings) proves a wonderful flourish to feed into the aesthetic and Belle, Lawrence, and Cox’s infectious sense of humor. Their line readings and comic timing is impeccable, the sarcasm and courage to take up the fight to conquer these feelings instead of merely trapping them a joy to witness. Because once you can find a way to defeat your own demons, there’s nothing in this world you cannot overcome.

Caveat: Apparently Angel Studios (who inexplicably bought the rights to this very charming film that they did not produce) have created a tie-in app that turns kids’ drawings into AI-generated monsters to mimic what occurs on-screen (which is conversely artisanal CGI—or was when I saw it at TIFF) and utilize the end credits to advertise it. I love the movie. I don’t, however, love helping Angel Studios make money.

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D’Arcy Carden and Tony Hale in SKETCH; courtesy of TIFF.