Warning: SPOILERS for Sketch are ahead!
When it comes to funny family movies that have come out as part of the 2025 movie schedule, I’m sure you never thought of one about sketched monsters that come to life. However, that’s the premise of Sketch, a new fantasy comedy about a little girl whose sketches come to life, and it turns out that the ending actually had a lovely easter egg from the director.
In Sketch's ending, the kids are able to work together to create these visions of love in order to fight all of the monsters that had come to life from Amber’s sketchbook, literally creating a hurricane of adoration in order to stop them. The director, Seth Worley, spoke to me about where the idea originally came from, and that it was all because he believed the “good and the bad” can exist in what he would call an “emotional ecosystem”:
The idea was that Amber drew her first picture on the back of a spelling test. And Tony's character is actually more interested in how she did on the test, and they talk about the word ecosystem that she gets tripped up on. And I always love this idea of an emotional ecosystem that gives voice, and processes both white and dark, both positive and negative emotions, and how those two can exist positively in the ecosystem. And that was what we were going for with that final sequence.
The film, starring Tony Hale as Amber's (Bianca Belle) father, explores grief and its impact on children, and the ending shows that both love and sadness can coexist. Then Worley went and dropped a little easter egg on me – that those visions of love were actually all drawings featured from his real-life kids:
Fun fact, those three monsters that kind of get featured in that third act sequence were drawings that my kids did. Each one of them is a drawing that my kid did.
Now that is the kind of sweetness I didn’t know I needed. I always love it when directors find ways to somehow sneak the loves of their family and everything else into their work. That makes it all the more personal.
And with a movie like Sketch, where drawings are turned into monsters and everything else, that feels like something that could easily happen. I know mentioning monsters might make it sound like something that would appear on the best horror movies list, but in reality, they’re all destroyed by water or heat, like how a crayon or a pencil sketch would be in real life.
Truthfully, the film is literally about fighting your demons in the best way possible – and sometimes, that’s through creative means. It echoes many classic family films, and makes it all the more fun.
Even so, that doesn’t mean that Sketch isn’t still the kind of movie that’s open to fun things. In fact, Tony Hale and D’Arcy Carden named-dropped past characters they'd love to see come back to life – and others that should probably stay in a sketchbook. They referenced characters from the Good Place cast, the Arrested Development cast and more, and I love it. There’s so much you could do with the opportunity of sketches to take on a physical form suddenly if you’re not connecting it to the feelings of the movie.
But honestly, I’m happy with how it ended. It makes me think of all the sketches I used to draw and feel good that somehow, those never came to life. I’m still happy with how far I’ve come, and that Sketch ending made me realize that. I think we could also use a little love in our lives, so maybe it’s time I sketch my little lovebug to combat the bad.
