Sketch (2024) | The Most Imaginative Film I've Seen in a Long Time

“Life is all about balancing the good and the bad; if you don’t carry the good with you, it just makes the bad stronger.”

These lines capture the heart of the movie, and they’re from a conversation between a father (Tony Hale) and his grieving daughter (Bianca Bell), setting the tone for this magical film.

And I’m ready to say it: Sketch (2024) is one of the most imaginative and creative films I’ve seen in a long time. It is a gem in a heap of mindless children’s programming.

The Fight: From Page to Life 

The story revolves around a family’s grief over their mother’s loss, as seen through the eyes of 10-year-old Amber Wyatt. At the beginning of the film, her counselor encourages her to work through her volatile emotions by drawing them in a notebook. Angry at the death of her mother, Amber puts the monsters living inside her onto the pages. They are dark and menacing.

One day, her older brother, Jack (Kue Lawrence) discovers a magical pond, which has transformative powers. He discovers it when he drops his cracked phone in the water and finds it restored anew. But when Amber drops her notebook of illustrations into the pond, it brings her monsters to life, threatening her family and community.

The film is about the ways we battle grief and pain. Men and women, boys and girls, approach it differently, and Sketch explores this idea brilliantly.

The Imagination Center Stage

I love how the filmmaker explores and shows the power of the imagination in the movie. It's Amber’s imagination that spawns the monsters, and it is the weapon to defeat them, well, mostly. We discover that Amber’s imagination isn’t sufficient alone; she must have the help of her family and friends if they want to fully control the monsters. This collaboration between Amber’s brother and their friend, Bowman (Kalon Cox), make it a kid-ensemble and coming of age film, harkening back to the movies and shows like The Goonies (1985), The Sandlot (1993), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Stranger Things (2016– ), which I can never get enough of.

The filmmaker also reminds us of the power of the imagination through the film’s mind-boggling visuals. How the filmmaking team made Amber’s illustrations come alive so realistically is unknown to me. And the best part of it all, the visuals do not give you the “over CGI-feel” that so many modern movies do.

But unlike The Goonies, The Sandlot, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Sketch leans into the horror genre, reminiscent of Stranger Things. And due to expertly crafted sound and editing, the movie is scary. It’s not gratuitous and gory, but definitely scary. And this is my only criticism of the film: it’s marketed for the whole family, but it’s not appropriate for young children, especially those with robust and sensitive imaginations.

In conclusion, this low-budget independent film, distributed by Angel Studios, gives me hope great movies aren’t dead. This thoughtful and adventurous story brings maturity with it, acknowledging that loss in a broken world carries darkness. To fight it, we need the help of others . . . and some imagination!

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Dane Bundy is President of Stage & Story and Director of Fine Arts at Regents School of Austin.