SKETCH

Yes — and this one earns its four stars. SKETCH takes a hard subject, a mother's death and the different ways a father and his children grieve her, and turns it into something funny, inventive, and ultimately hopeful. The father's devotion to his kids, and the way the three of them (plus a loyal friend) stick together through chaos, gives the film real heart.

The cost is real too. Amber's drawings are described in violent detail — stabbings, blood, pulled-out eyeballs — and the monsters she conjures are genuinely frightening on screen, not just implied. There's also some light foul language and a premise built on magical thinking: a pond that fixes things and brings drawings to life.

For older children and adults, this is a rewarding watch with real substance underneath the scares. For younger or more sensitive kids, wait until they're a bit older. Bottom line: worth seeing, with your child's fright tolerance in mind.

Amber and her brother Jack are still grieving their mother's death, and Amber has taken to drawing disturbing, violent monsters. A teacher gives her a notebook to channel her feelings safely. But when the notebook accidentally falls into a strange pond near their house — one that seems to fix broken things — her drawings don't just disappear. They come to life, and they're not friendly.

Four stars means SKETCH delivers on nearly every front, and the source praises it accordingly. The child performances — from the young actors playing Amber, Jack, and their friend Bowman — are singled out as genuinely excellent, carrying a story that asks a lot of them emotionally. The monster effects are strong enough to earn real scares without feeling cheap. Most impressively, the film manages to be funny and inventive while still taking grief seriously, showing how a father and his children process loss in very different ways without flattening either experience. It's a rare family film that trusts its young cast and its subject matter in equal measure.

SKETCH gets the human center right. A father who won't give up on reaching his grieving children. Siblings and a friend who fight, but reconcile and stay loyal to one another. A story that treats healthy grief — naming feelings, making room for both sorrow and joy — as something worth working toward, not something to rush past. That's a strong moral foundation, and it's the film's real achievement.

Where it departs from a biblical view is in its magic: a pond that heals wounds and fixes broken objects, and drawings that leap off the page into monstrous life, are pure pagan magical thinking, with no source or explanation beyond "the pond does it." Children should understand this is fantasy, not how the real world — or real healing — works.

The film's better instinct shows up in its ending, which points toward something truer than magic: the idea that we get to choose what we dwell on, monsters or beauty, darkness or light. That's the same choice Paul urges on believers everywhere: "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things" (Philippians 4:8).

SKETCH takes grief seriously, makes room for real fear, and still lands on hope — that's a rare and welcome combination in a family film. It earns its scares honestly and its tender moments too. So here's our answer, the same one we opened with: worth the trip — older children and up.