Sketch Brings Kids’ Creepy Doodles to Life — The Summer’s Strangest, Most Heartfelt Family Film
Sketch is a family-oriented horror-adjacent film that opened in roughly 2,000 theaters this summer. The movie, written and directed by Seth Worley, follows two children whose drawings start to come to life after one of them drops a sketchbook into a mysterious pond. Angel Studios picked up the completed indie for distribution, and the film stars Bianca Belle, Kue Lawrence, Tony Hale, D’Arcy Carden, and Kalon Cox.
- What the movie is about and how the premise works
- Key cast and crew credits
- Visual effects approach and thematic notes
- Distribution context and links to related reporting
Plot in brief
Amber (Bianca Belle) and her younger brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) are coping after the death of their mother. Amber draws monsters that grow darker since the loss. Then Jack finds a pond that heals and also brings drawings to life. When Amber’s sketchbook falls into the pond, her creatures appear in town. The story follows Amber, Jack, and their classmate Bowman (Kalon Cox) as they deal with creatures that range from mischievous to dangerous, while the family confronts grief.
Cast and crew
Seth Worley wrote and directed the film. The principal cast includes Bianca Belle (Amber), Kue Lawrence (Jack), Tony Hale (Taylor, the father), D’Arcy Carden (Liz, the realtor sister), and Kalon Cox (Bowman).
Visual effects and tone
The visual effects recreate childlike drawings as three-dimensional creatures, with designs such as scuttling spiders with eyeball heads and a large orange maw creature. The effects team aimed for a look that matches the original sketches rather than photorealism. Consequently, the creatures function as practical visualizations of Amber’s art within a small-scale, location-limited adventure.
The film balances light scares and humor while showing characters processing grief. For instance, some scenes underline how creative outlets can serve as emotional release. At times, the script uses repeated comic beats; one recurring line of dialogue in the movie is, “Did you just say [funny line]?”
Genre context and references
Sketch revisits a common horror trope: unsettling drawings by children. For background on that trope, see the example list of disturbing child artwork in horror movies on Hard Drive. Additionally, the film’s treatment of grief and metaphor aligns it with articles discussing modern horror as metaphor, such as the overview at Collider.
Distribution and related titles
Angel Studios acquired Sketch for distribution after the film was completed. The company previously distributed Sound of Freedom, and earlier this year it released an animated adaptation of a Charles Dickens-related work that it promoted widely. Angel Studios’ box office history and distributor data are available at The Numbers.
The Dickens-related adaptation was an animated retelling tied to family material and public-domain themes; background on the original Dickens text and its publication context can be found at Wikipedia. Angel Studios also uses a ticketing approach it calls “pay it forward” for some releases.
Connections to other family films
The movie has been compared in tone and target age to recent family-oriented fantasy and game-adjacent titles. For example, its emphasis on creativity and problem-solving has invited comparisons to younger-audience movies that celebrate building and imagination.
