Review: 'Sketch' is an effective scary movie for the pre-teen set, and the biggest surprise is how moving it is

Writer-director Seth Worley has created a fascinating beast in “Sketch” — a family-friendly horror movie that’s also a tender drama about family grief. It shouldn’t work, but it does, thanks to a playful tone and some unsettling animation.

Amber (Bianca Belle) is a moody 9-year-old who gets picked on regularly by Bowman (Kalon Cox), an obnoxious kid. Amber’s protector is her slightly older brother, Jack (Kue Lawrence). Her refuge is her sketchbook, in which she draws images of disturbing monsters — so disturbing that the school’s principal calls her dad, Taylor (Tony Hale), to find out how things are at home.

Things are not good at home. Taylor and the tow kids frequently tiptoe around the big thing they have in common: The recent death of Taylor’s wife, and the kids’ mom, Ally (Allie McCulloch, seen in occasional flashbacks). But, as Taylor’s sister, Liz (D’Arcy Carden), points out, Amber’s the only one with a coping mechanism, with her drawings — which the school counselor suggests she keep creating, because on paper, they can’t do any real harm.

This being a movie with a slight supernatural edge, the counselor’s statement turns out not to be true. Jack finds a pond in the woods near their house, and discovers that things that go into the water become fixed and/or healed. When Amber’s notebook lands in the pond, soon the forbidden monsters come bubbling up, reflecting the angry energy Amber put into drawing them.

Worley visualizes what’s next partly as a Japanese monster movie, with Amber’s creations as the kaiju rampaging the countryside. It’s also a chase picture, with the monsters pursuing Amber, Jack and their reluctant ally, Bowman, through the woods. And sometimes it’s got a twinge of horror, with suggestions of “Pet Sematary” and, in an audacious turn on Worley’s part, a PG-rated callback to the shower scene in “Psycho.”

“Sketch” is an oddly affecting movie, one where you come for the animated monsters and stay for the emotional wallop of watching a dad and his kids processing unfathomable grief. Holding it together is Worley’s inventive use of his animated monsters, and an innate understanding that kids like a good scare, too, if it’s calibrated for a cathartic surprise without creating some horror-movie trauma.

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‘Sketch’

★★★

Opens Wednesday, August 6, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for scary action, some violence, thematic elements, language and rude humor. Running time: 92 minutes.