Must-See Movie Review: Sketch (In Theaters) – Child’s Monster Drawings Come To Life For Funny, Slightly Scary Exploration Of Grief, Difficult Feelings

Must-See Movie Review: Sketch (In Theaters) – Child’s Monster Drawings Come To Life For Funny, Slightly Scary Exploration Of Grief, Difficult Feelings

To quote Mister Rogers, longtime public television advocate and beloved childhood icon, “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” In Sketch, Amber, the film’s co-protagonist, draws scary monsters doing harm to people and things, as a way to cope with her angry feelings. Why does she have so much anger? Her mother died a short while ago (the exact amount of time is unclear).

In a very real sense, we learn that they all grieved her loss alone rather than together. Their dad took down all photos of her and put them into a suitcase. They didn’t look at them, they didn’t talk about her, they really were in a state of grief limbo. It wasn’t made clear that they could lean on their dad, but like most men, he too was detached from his own feelings of grief and loss.

 

Despite that, the dad in this film is a very strong and kind father. His concern is always for his kids first, and he, too, grows and changes as a person. He comes to understand, thanks to their Aunt Liz, that he needs to be there for both of his kids, and that his son is burying his feelings even more than his daughter, who expresses the anger she feels in constructive ways.

 

While on the bus to school when the movie begins, Bowman, their annoying classmate, takes the paper Amber is drawing. It’s of a monster – who happens to be stabbing him in the stomach. Every monster has a backstory, and this one is just pure evil. She wants to cause suffering, as much as possible. Naturally, he reports this to the school counselor, who brings in Amber’s dad. However, the counselor also tells Amber that this is a great way to express her harmful, angry feelings in a constructive, harmless way. Of course, she didn’t know that there were magical ponds that would bring these evil monsters to life.

 

And right then, the movie takes a very odd twist. Jack, Amber’s brother, discovers a magical pond in the woods behind their house. A pond that can fix things that are broken – like his phone and a smashed ceramic plate. It’s also, though he doesn’t know it yet, a pond that brings things to life – like drawings of monsters.

 

So the day after he makes this discovery about the pond, he sneaks out in the middle of the night…with their mom’s ashes. But this night, Amber sneaks out after him. For some weird reason, she’s carrying her notebook of drawings…with no markers…in the dark. However, they avoid a Stephen King-esque Pet Cemetery style movie with what happens next. As Amber tries to wrest the ashes from her brother, her book falls into the pond. When they get it out, Jack quickly hurries them home and back into bed. And this is when the strange stuff starts happening. She quickly notices that every drawing that was previously in her notebook is now gone.  Like it was sucked off the page.

 

That night, Amber heard tapping on the window, so she moves into the closet, where her dad finds her in the morning. There’s a yellow substance on the outside of the window, but it makes no sense. So they all head to school. As they are on the bus, the first monster comes after them. This is the blue monster with super long arms that’s in the promo for this film and in every trailer. As their creator, Amber knows how their minds work. She knows that this monster just wants to kill them, and it may have already killed the person in the truck that blocks the road, causing them to stop.  She also knows that it can be lulled to sleep with music – but only gentle music.  Once rock style tracks start, the monster comes right back to life.

 

The kids narrowly escape, with Bowman running away by himself first without helping anyone else off the bus. The kids all narrowly escape, but it would seem that the bus driver doesn’t survive the encounter, as she appears to be dead, and in the last scene where they get on the bus, we never see the driver.

 

At the same time, Taylor (their dad) is trying to sell their house, but the spiders Amber drew stole his phone, hiding it in a closet along with his coffee mug. The spider comes out and attacks him, at which point he kills it. Then he notices what he just killed, and he is perplexed. It’s a bright pink color, like a crayon, with super sharp legs. He and Aunt Liz head to the school, which had been trying to call his phone.

 

When they arrive at a fire station where all the kids were taken, they cannot find his kids.  However, they do know that they escaped from the bus, but no one knows what happened after that.  As Taylor and Aunt Liz head out to find them, they are stopped by apparently running over a pretty tabby cat.  But the tabby cat is actually a monster with super strength, who knocks over their car, significantly inconveniencing them.  They live in a rural area, so it takes them some time to get home.  By then, the kids have already been home and have left. But not before encountering those same spiders before, only not just one – thousands of them.  After escaping from that ordeal, they set out to find the pond to find a way they can make the monsters go away.  This, of course, is easier said than done.

 

The final scenes and the end of the movie are exciting and fast-paced, and at the same time heartwarming.  All of the characters demonstrate incredible bravery – particularly in the face of this total weird wackiness.  I mean – there are monsters that look like cartoons – that were just about to eat you but are now battling other monsters – and all the people can do is watch with their mouths hanging open and their cellphones out, recording.  At the same time, Amber and the other heroes of this story are battling it out with legions of evil creatures.  Talk about a surreal movie.

 

This movie is very well done.  It has all of the elements of a great film, and while there ARE special effects, that is NOT the focus of the movie. In other words, story, character development, and an excellent plot are front and center, which makes it a technically excellent movie, but it is much more than that.  You will be moved by this film, and you might come away with a greater understanding of human nature and what the inner life of kids can be like.  It is a fantastic movie, highly recommended as a Must-See movie, and I would give it five stars:

 

 

Banner Image: Sketch key art. Image Credit – Angel Studios