Since the death of her mother, 10-year-old Amber Wyatt (Bianca Belle) has been bothered by all sorts of dark thoughts. Rather than act on those impulses, Amber commits her most monstrous ideas to a secret journal, purging anxieties from her subconscious though art. The process would be therapeutic, if not for a gnarly twist that releases Amber’s scary scribbles into the real world: marker-drawn hearts with insatiable appetites, a googly-eyed glitter monster on long bendy legs, and swarms of red, arachnid-like “Eyeders.”
With his stellar indie family adventure “Sketch,” commercials director Seth Worley has come up with a creative — and highly teachable — concept for his feature debut, using imaginative visual effects to impart a valuable lesson about dealing with grief and other strong feelings. The live-action/CG-animated hybrid channels the spirit of “Jumanji,” by way of “The Babadook,” but with something important to say. Once Amber’s doodles get loose and start to terrorize the locals, the young “morphan” (her word for a child whose mother has died), older brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) and their still-grieving dad Taylor (Tony Hale) must confront the feelings they’ve been avoiding. If not, their unresolved emotions are liable to consume them entirely.
The trouble starts when Amber draws a sinister version of herself stabbing one of her classmates — a neighbor named Bowman (Kalon Cox), who’s not so much a bully as he is just plain obnoxious (but in that hard-to-hate way, like Chunk from “The Goonies”). Taken to the counselor’s office, Amber expects to be punished, but is instead told, “You could have kept that anger inside you,” and encouraged to put such thoughts in a private composition book, where they can’t hurt anyone.
That’s good advice, except for the fact that Jack has discovered a strange feature of the pond behind their home — maybe a spell of some kind. Toss something in, and the water magically fixes it. It works on his phone and a broken plate, and he’s preparing to try it with Mom’s ashes (almost certainly a bad idea) when Amber’s notebook falls in. The next thing they know, her sketches have manifested in the real world, Godzilla-sized and programmed to do whatever she had in mind when she drew them: attack, snack or simply annoy.
Logistically speaking, Worley is able to get by without needing fancy sets or Marvel-caliber effects, since these crude intruders are based on Amber’s rudimentary drawings, right down to the material they’re made of. Heat seems to be an effective weapon against the waxy crayon critters, while a good smack will dissolve chalk monsters into poofs of colored dust. After combatting Amber’s sketches for several hours, the entire family (including aunt Liz, played by D’Arcy Carden) winds up smeared in every kind of art supply.
But they still haven’t dealt with Amber’s most intimidating creation: the evil version of herself she drew disemboweling Bowman. Drawn in sharp graphite, then hand-colored in a purple hoodie, this adversary seems a lot more threatening than the others — which are mostly just comical, be it the location-blabbing “Tattler” or the vaguely Lovecraftian tentacle cat. A few are actually benevolent, like whatever’s been leaving yellow dust on the bedroom window.
“Sketch” operates on a level of logic that young viewers should find intuitive, inviting them to problem-solve alongside the story’s characters. It’s a lot like “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl,” in the sense that only a parent could have conceived it with the participation of his own kids (there are Worley family drawings mixed in with some of Amber’s darker creations).
Driven by the conviction that such a personal project could speak to a wide audience, Worley made a 12-minute proof-of-concept short called “Darker Colors.” The feature version is warmer and a lot more funny, with “Harold and Purple Crayon” vibes in the way that fresh sketches help save the day.
The helmer makes no attempt to hide the didactic side of “Sketch,” but in Hale, he’s found an actor who seems anything but a know-it-all. Both the filmmaker and star possess a welcome humility as dads, crafting the story to suggest that kids and adults have important things to learn from one another, and that some challenges are best faced as a family.
Each of the characters has been coping differently with Mom’s passing. Taylor took down all her photos and tried to act like nothing was wrong, which is actually much worse than Amber’s strategy. Fortunately, Hale’s character is good about communicating with his kids, giving grown-ups a good place to start when the time comes to discuss what they’ve seen, plus a few well-phrased takeaways for themselves.