By John Corrado

The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 5th to 15th, more information can be found right here.

Written and directed by visual effects artist Seth Worley in his feature directorial debut, Sketch is a nice surprise. It’s a decent and charming live action family film about a girl whose angry drawings come to life, that is unafraid of going to some darker places about grief and confronting difficult emotions.

Taylor Wyatt (Tony Hale) is a widowed dad, trying to support his kids through losing their mom, but struggling with all the questions they have (like if they are now orphans, even though their dad is still alive). Daughter Amber (Bianca Belle) has taken to letting out her frustrations at home and school through drawing, while his son Jack (Kue Lawrence) discovers a magical pond that can fix things.

When Amber’s notebook filled with angry scribblings ends up falling into Jack’s pond, her monstrous drawings start to leap off the page and come to life as literal monsters attacking the town. It’s here that Worley starts to bring visual effects into this world, realizing Amber’s fantastical crayon drawings through some surprisingly solid CGI (the film recalls the 2009 Robert Rodriguez film Shorts in this way). But the most impressive aspect of Worley’s film is how his screenplay respectfully handles the emotions of the kids.

Hale is good in a performance that lets him balance comedy with more sensitive moments, while the kid actors are able to hold their own. The story itself is a somewhat predictable, and the film often seems geared more towards younger audience members. But Sketch does a fine job of handling its heavier themes, and Worley’s film refreshingly harkens back to a time when kids adventure movies could be funny but also a bit twisted and dark. It deserves to be seen by a wider audience.

Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)