One of the most persistent tropes in horror is the disturbed child who draws unspeakable images in his or her sketch book. (Or school notebook. Or school textbook.) And what’s the best way to turn a trope on its head and save it from the realm of cliche?

Why you make a whole movie about it of course, only in this movie, instead of that being a precursor to other horrors, it’s the whole thing — and the images come to life and bound around in the woods behind the home of the protagonist. And it’s not actually a horror movie, but a consideration of grief and loss, which also manages to be a lot of fun. It’s aimed at, and appropriate for, children who might be interested in horror one day, but at this point still have their innocence intact.

That’s what Seth Worley has pulled off with Sketch, the new film he writes, directs and edits. It stars Tony Hale as Taylor, a father who has recently lost his wife — a trope a lot more prevalent than the disturbed young doodler — and whose two children are coming to grips with it in different ways. Amber (Bianca Belle) has been getting in trouble at school due to these graphic images she’s been scrawling, which she freely admits are inspired by and directed at her classmate Bowman (Kalon Cox), and whose gruesome details she humorously explains when asked. Her brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) is bottling up his sadness and trying to fix his sister, though he’s also carrying around the box of his mother’s ashes. Their aunt and Taylor’s sister, Liz (D’Arcy Carden), is just trying to sell their house so they can all move on, though Taylor keeps sabotaging viewings by potential buyers.

The setup comes to a head when Jack trips while running in the woods one day, his mobile phone falling into a pond with an unnatural blue shimmer. When he removes the phone it’s cracked, his palm cut from bracing the fall. Within minutes, though, both are restored to their previous condition. Jack understands the power the pond may have and the potential for his box of ashes, but before he can take any action on that front, his sister’s sketch book has had an accidental tumble into the pond as well.

Sketch would likely be classified in the Goosebumps realm of horror directed at younger viewers, if that weren’t underselling the quality of the movie — and also overselling the extent to which it’s a horror movie. There are some scary images here, but they are more often undercut by the right sort of cuteness. For example, yes there might be a tall orange creature that has a circular mouth of sharp teeth where its head should be, but it also manages to be adorable. (In part because, having no eyes, its aim is very bad.)

There is the occasional wobbly special effect in Sketch, but that’s the only part of the movie that wobbles in the slightest. Hale and Carden are really solid here, but the revelations are these child actors, who can show real emotion as well as deliver a wickedly funny line of dialogue. Although there are ways the plot is driven by her brother as much as it is driven by her, this movie belongs to the young actress playing Amber, Bianca Belle. We’ll be seeing more from all of the trio of lead child actors, but Belle could shoot off into the stratosphere (and has the appropriate stage name to do so). Kalon Cox is also really funny as the “bully” who really isn’t.

This movie is more fun than it is heavy. Sketch delivers a variation on the “things come to life” genre of adventure film that we haven’t quite seen before. The creatures from Amber’s notebook serve a similar narrative function to the unleashed menaces in Goosebumps, but they have their own distinct aesthetic properties. They are composed of crayon on the page, so when they touch things or sometimes get stomped on, they leave great plumes of crayon dust everywhere. This colour somewhat literally takes off some of the film’s darker edges, while also having the benefit of distinguishing the images that are supposed to be more traditionally scary.

While the fun exceeds the heaviness, Sketch is also the perfect amount of heavy, and its emotional potency has the tendency to creep up on you. It’s a small miracle when we find ourselves having a slightly different reaction to a child grieving a dead parent than we’ve had before, and Worley’s film pulls off this small miracle.

The film also has a new and interesting interactive relationship with its audience, one that takes you aback just a little bit but might be effective. During the credits a QR code pops up on the screen, as Hale and Carden encourage children in the audience to use it to download an app to bring their own doodles to life, presumably using AI. It’s a smart way to encourage children to keep drawing, even while technology forces us all into the future faster than we might like. Hale’s and Carden’s message also encourages children to see Sketch in the cinema, though I’m not sure what hypothetical scenario they imagine, where children would be receiving a closing credits message while still having a potential theatrical viewing ahead of them. In any case, both are messages this critic is eager to endorse.

 

Sketch opens in cinemas today.