Sketch: 2025 - A Mini Review

SKETCH (2025)

Grief with crayons. And glitter.

Sketch is a movie with heart. I immediately loved it, and though it's not something that I will have on repeat, its emotion resonated with me in the gentlest way possible, and I have no doubts this will become someone's favourite movie.

Seth Worley created something precious. A tender, weird, sweet and sad movie that blended horror, fantasy and grief. A deceptively simple world, a child, Amber Wyatt (Bianca Belle), is grieving the loss of her mother. She is filled with sadness, anger, so much to the point that she draws dark pictures in her notebook of another student in school being harmed - something the guidance counsellor told her was a good thing, because it was an outlet to get all the feelings out. She was provided a book, an outlet, an outbox, to put all her dark thoughts in, with the medium she knew how to use - drawing. Her brother, Jack (Kue Lawerance), wants to fix his sister, fix his father's loneliness. All from a small pond that he learned can heal things and bring things to life.

After a short series of events and a small confrontation, Amber finds herself dropping her sketchbook in the pond, and all the creatures she created come to life to wreak havoc on the town.

A child draws monsters that come to life, but what the movie is doing is asking, What do we do with the parts of ourselves that break when grief snaps them? Do we bury them? Fight them? Feed them?

The movie is endearing, the children are heartfelt, funny and feel real, and Tony Hale as their father nails his role: a protector of his children who needs to learn to share his sadness instead of hiding it.

The visuals are odd, but in all the right ways. The monsters are not CGI visions of the drawings Amber does, but look to be more ripped from the pages themselves. They are markers. Crayon. Chalk, and it's clear to see. There's texture. Colour. The way a horror would look if it were right from the mind of a healing child.

Sketch finds humour in the cracks, the messiness of life. It was real, human and true, expected humour that was the heart of the film. It did not poke fun at trauma but allowed us to sit in it. The laughter was not "we have to laugh or else we will cry," but we laugh because sometimes, even in the darkest times, humour prevails.

There's not going to be an epic review on this movie. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it needs to be. It's touching, fragile, and has a mark of a great story, all wrapped up in a message that if you ever want to see light while healing, you have to go through the darkness to get there.

In theatres August 6 2025.

3.5/5