'Sketch': Angel's Family Comedy Brings a Lot of Fun -- and Fright

Sketch, hitting theaters on Aug. 6, is a different sort of family film for Angel Studios -- it's got heart and humor, but also serious, thoughtful themes and some real scares.

What's Sketch About?

Here's how Angel Studios describes it:

When a young girl’s sketchbook falls into a strange pond, her drawings come to life — unpredictable, chaotic, and dangerously real. As the town unravels, she and her brother must track down the creatures before they leave permanent damage. Their father, racing to find them through the fallout, must navigate a town in crisis to reunite his family and stop the disaster they never meant to unleash.

Newcomer Bianca Belle stars as the girl, Amber, who's coping with the death of her mother. Tony Hale (Arrested Development, Veep) plays her widower father, Taylor; Kue Lawrence plays Jack, her brother; and D'Arcy Carden (The Good Place) plays her Aunt Liz (who's trying to sell the family home, only to have Taylor sabotage her efforts).

And Kalon Cox makes an impression as Amber's school frenemy, Bowman.

Hale is also a producer on the project, which is written, directed, and edited by first-time feature-filmmaker Seth Worley, who has a long history in short films, commercials, and explainer videos.

Take a look:

What Makes Sketch Different?

As I said above, Sketch represents a bit of a departure for Angel Studios. There is no overt faith element but plenty of fantasy/magical ones. Ultimately the story is about how a family copes with grief, but along the way, it blends comedy elements with horror -- not unlike 1987's Goonies (written by Catholic Chris Columbus).

There's plenty of laughs -- often supplied by Taylor and Bowman -- but there are also some genuine scares. There's no serious injury, and (spoiler alert) nobody dies, but parents of sensitive littles might want to think twice.

Also, there's a sprinkling of mild language, and a lot of Minecraft references (we know kids loved the recent A Minecraft Movie).

Overall, it's a movie that takes the loss of a parent seriously but not itself -- even though it doesn't shy away from its darker and more serious elements.

Amber works out her feelings by drawing truly horrific things, but it's good to see that the adults in the film don't entirely freak out about that. They know it's a phase, and while they're concerned, the general sense is it's better to get it out on the page than in reality.

Of course, when these chalk and crayon critters come to life, that's another matter. Angel Studios has even created an app where fans can see their own drawings in animation.

Last week, Angel premiered the film in Los Angeles for some of the 1.4M paid members of the Angel Guild (who vote on which projects the studio embarks on) and invited guests (like me). The kids in attendance seemed delighted with Sketch.

SKETCH-COLLAGE

Big Fun, But Not a Big Budget -- and a Reason Behind It All

Angel Studios co-founder Neal Harmon spoke before the premiere of Sketch, which Angel acquired for distribution after it screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. In a summer full of bloated blockbusters, the film also represents what can be done with will and imagination.

Said Harmon:

Sketch is a movie made for far less that 5 million dollars over an eight-year period, because it's a labor of love. And guys like Tony Hale, a three-time Emmy Award winner, and D'Arcy, they went in and said, "We're helping build this show for cheap, so that it can happen, because it's such an important film." And you'll understand, it's how to deal with grief as a family.

At a Q&A afterward, Worley described his philosophy behind blending the scares with the laughs:

The honest truth is, I'm never going to be a good director like Spielberg. So, it was not a challenge. It was just like, "Let's just commit to this and call our shortcomings restraint."

I think so much of it, I've talked about this a lot, but the tonal balance, to me, it's more about just completely trusting where you're leading the story.

I've said that people in my life who've gone through the most horrible tragedies, also tend to be the funniest people in my life. I think if you lean hard into tragedy, into drama, you're going to find comedy there, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

And if you lean hard into comedy, you find revelations about the human experience that way. I think that it's just about listening to that, and constantly going back and forth in that way, and listening to the story.

And so, all that to say, I think we knew the movie was, I was never convinced the movie was going to be legitimately scary. So, it was more about playing it like it was. And if it was scary, it's scary. If it's not, it's funny. And so, it's just a coward's way into filmmaking, is what it is.

Here's another look at Sketch:

Image: Angel Studios

Kate O’Hare, a longtime entertainment journalist, is Social Media Content Manager and Blog Editor at Family Theater Productions.