Review: ‘Sketch’ is a Rewarding Movie About Hand-Drawn Monsters

Review: ‘Sketch’ is a Rewarding Movie About Hand-Drawn Monsters

by Alex Billington
August 8, 2025

“You’re incredibly creative… but life is all about balancing the good and the bad.” There are way, way, way too many films being made nowadays in which grief is used as a plot device. It’s redundant, repetitive, and cliche. And it keeps happening over and over. However, there are a few good movies that are actually about grief. Sketch is one of the good ones. Written and directed by Seth Worley as his feature directorial debut after many other shorts, Sketch is an independent production that first premiered at the 2025 Toronto Film Film Festival last year. It’s a magical, whimsical, fully amusing, delightfully clever, genuinely heartwarming, deeply inspiring adventure movie that anyone at any age can enjoy. It was picked up by the distributor Angel Studios (more on that later) and is now playing in theaters where it should be seen. Bring your whole family, but most importantly, take the kids to go see Sketch and let them be inspired and moved and intrigued by it. Not only is it tons of fun – it’s the kind of movie that might actually make a real difference in someone’s life.

Written and directed by Worley, Sketch is about a family – Tony Hale stars as Taylor Wyatt, with his two kids Amber (Bianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence). There is no direct explanation for what happened, but it’s obvious the mother / wife passed away and now they family is trying to move on together. Taylor’s sister Liz (D’Arcy Carden) helps him out from time to time, but this story is really about Taylor coping as a single father trying to get by while struggling with the overwhelming feelings of grief. His daughter Amber, a bright & creative girl, gets in trouble at school because her usual sparkly & fun drawings have taken a very dark turn. There’s blood and death and monsters and scary things in her sketchbook. But instead of making this out to be a bad thing, this script tenderly explores this darkness as part of the grief they’re all feeling. When her brother finds a strange magic lake in the forest near their home, and her sketchbook accidentally gets thrown into it, her various hand-drawn monsters start to come to life and wreak havoc in their town. It’s a story about how dark things can get after you lose someone, but also how a loving family can overcome that darkness by working through it together. As Taylor says – you have to balance the bad with some good.

If someone is going to make a movie that’s actually, literally about grief, then this right here is a beautiful example of how to do it right. And how to make it meaningful and playful and endearing in a clever way. And how to actually address grief directly instead of just stuffing it into the script to give characters a cliche backstory. Sketch is such an empowering and inspiring film – letting amusing creativity flourish on screen to inspire the creativity inside of all of us. It’s funny and the kids are great. This really is something special – as everyone has been saying since it premiered at TIFF last year. Unlike all of these other films that use grief but barely mention it, this movie actually talks about it, discussing how overwhelming the feelings are and how hard it is to move on and keep on going with life. And it does so in a way that is approachable for kids, too. Of course – it’s a story about kids made for kids. But that’s not easy to pull off without becoming too cheesy. It’s so wonderfully endearing because it doesn’t shame anyone or make it a scary topic to discuss, it appropriately shows us that the idea of not discussing it is even scarier. Her drawings are dark and freaky (and funny) but that’s part of how she’s processing her own grief & sadness. Few films are ever this honest.

Tony Hale is also absolute terrific in this. His reactions, his emotions, his believability, his comedic timing all perfect in here. He connects with these two kids delightfully, and they all make this story so much fun. If I didn’t know this was an indie film that premiered at TIFF, I probably would’ve thought it was a big studio production. It’s that well made and that entertaining – and exactly the kind of movie you want to run home and tell everyone else about. Alas, the movie is being released by the right-wing religious distributor called Angel Studios. It has been our policy to ignore anything they put out. But this deserves an exception. Sketch is surprisingly devoid of any religious undertones or context, or anything political or any right wing beliefs or anything controversial of that kind. Which is relief. It’s a great movie no matter what, especially because it is so moving without religion – or any other dogma often used to help deal with grief – and deserves to be seen and appreciated regardless of who is releasing it. Though I do feel I must acknowledge this aspect of it.

The obnoxious app advertisement that appears during the credits is also disgusting, disingenuous, and bad. But that’s a different story. Aside from that, Sketch is a refreshing & rewarding cinematic creation. We really need more imaginative, wholesome, amusing adventures to balance the bad in the world with good movies.

Alex’s Rating: 8 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing

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