My ten-year-old granddaughter and I just got back from watching the 2024 movie Sketch, which just had its general release to U.S. theaters yesterday.

Spoiler Alert! This is a brand new film, so if you don’t want to know more, stop here. Well, actually, you should know up front that the PG rating pushes right up against PG-13 for violence and horror. It is actually a children’s horror movie but without the blood, guts, and killing. However, it’s pretty intense.

The story surrounds a Dad Taylor Wyatt (Tony Hale) and his two kids Amber (Dianca Belle) and Jack (Kue Lawrence). The mother has died (no details) and the Dad’s response is to pretty much bypass the anguish and grief and try to push the family beyond it.

That doesn’t work out so well for Amber. She’s always liked to draw, but now, her creations take on a much darker tone including depicting a monster attack on a bullying schoolmate (Kalon Cox as Bowman Lynch). This comes to the attention of a school counselor who actually encourages Amber to draw her darker feelings rather than acting on them (such has having her monsters suck out Bowman’s eyeballs).

Meanwhile, Jack is in the woods behind their house. He trips and falls, dropping his phone into a pond. His hand is gouged in the process but when he puts that hand in the pond to retrieve his phone, his hand is healed and within seconds, his ruined phone is restored to perfect working order.

The family lives in a rural house that Dad is trying to sell through his Real Estate Agent sister Liz (D’Arcy Carden). This is apparently due to there being too many memories off Mom (Allie McCullouch as Ally). She’s been cremated and her ashes are kept in a box in the closet.

Early one morning, Amber sees Jack leaving the house with the ashes and follows him to the pond. He apparently hasn’t read W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw or he’d realize this sort of thing never ends well.

In a struggle to prevent Jack from throwing the box into the pond, Amber drops her sketchbook into the water. Aghast, they watch the pond’s surface churn and boil. Then they run (taking Mom with them).

The local community is then plagued with the various creatures that represent Amber’s grief and rage, including one that is actually her alter ego, making more monster drawings and dropping them into the pond.

After their school bus is attacked, Amber, Jack, and Bowman band together in an attempt to stop or undo the monsters from Amber’s imagination. Bowman has a special interest in this because his being a jerk has made him a special target, though her monsters want to kill everyone.

Throughout this, Tony and Liz process how he hasn’t let the kids know how torn apart he is at Mom’s death and has focused so much on Amber’s hostility that he’s completely ignored the “good kid” Jack.

Each of the kids get their turn to shine in this movie, but Cox manages to chew up a lot of the scenery.

I kept expecting people to start dying or at least being horribly maimed, because that’s what Amber’s monsters were designed to do. However, because this film’s target audience was kids, the filmmakers stopped short of any of that. In some sense, that was the most unrealistic element of the movie, because given the lethal capacities of the monsters, someone should have died.

There’s a happy ending but I won’t fill out the details here. In some sense, it was too happy. In the last scene, Amber and Bowman trade friendly insults on the bus while Amber is seen drawing a happy picture. It would have been better if she were still conflicted because, after all, grief doesn’t disappear just because you’ve slain all the monsters.

After the credits, Hale and Carden appear onscreen encouraging the audience to scan a QR code and download the “Sketch” app onto your phone. The app lets you bring pre-loaded images as well as your own uploaded drawings to life.

My granddaughter is exploring those possibilities on my phone as I write this.

As tense as the movie was, I’d certainly recommend it. “Sketch” is a welcome departure from the usual animated movie and animated movie turned into live action films generally inflicted upon audiences. Granted, Hale’s portrayal of the semi-buffoonish Dad was sometimes over-the-top, but the movie genuinely dealt with grief and anger, especially in children.

With the focus on our trio, the audience missed most of what the monsters were doing to the rest of the town and countryside (where there were plenty of opportunities for death and destruction), but it’s wasn’t too big a loss.

It’s a movie that you and your kids (starting no younger than eight or so depending on their maturity level) should see.

Yes, there were people of color. No, there was no blatant representation or any specific “social” or “progressive” message that overwhelmed the central theme of the movie. I was grateful for that. Not exactly “good clean fun,” but a movie kids could get involved in and maybe relate to. Loss comes in a lot of flavors for children including divorce and custody battles. That makes kids feel hurt and angry, too.