‘Sketch’: Angel’s Family Horror-Comedy Draws Laughs & Scares

Like other films distributed by Angel Studios, Sketch, hitting theaters on Aug. 6, is aimed at the family and values audience, but this time, not exactly the faith audience. However, it passed muster with the dues-paying 1.4M members of the Angel Guild, so it’s already been tested on a good slice of the studio’s core constituency.

Written, directed, and edited by first-time feature-filmmaker Seth Worley — who has a long history in short films, commercials and explainer videos — Sketch has lots of humor and real heart but also tackles some serious themes … along with delivering some real scares.

UPDATE 8/13: Sketch is winning with critics and online audience reaction but not really scaring up big numbers at the box office, with a modest $5.2M so far (arguably against a budget reportedly below that).

A headline from Collider:

Despite 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, Angel Studios’ Latest Family Film Delivers Barely-Passable Domestic Box Office Debut

UPDATE 8/20: Angel Studios released a statement addressing the concerns of some parents that Sketch wasn’t appropriate for younger children, so the distributor is instituting an Angel Guild Age Recommendation rating, which the Angel Guild members put at age 10 and up..

At Angel, we know that today’s PG rating can mean wildly different things depending on the film. For many families, PG is interpreted as “basically G”—but SKETCH isn’t a G-rated experience, and it’s not trying to be.

Think of SKETCH as landing somewhere between PG and PG-13. The movie has a mix of thrilling moments, light peril, a few sharp words, and some pretty intense (but very colorful) monster scenes. This is a movie designed to thrill, make you laugh, and pull at your heart—but it’s not made for toddlers.

The Angel Guild Recommended Age is a new kind of age guidance, based on feedback from real families, not committees. You deserve more than a vague rating. You deserve real context.

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), who’s also a producer, 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.

Take a look:

What Makes Sketch Different?

There are no overt faith references in Sketch, but plenty of fantasy/magical element. It laces humor with horror — not unlike 1987’s Goonies (written by Catholic Chris Columbus) — in telling the story of how a family copes with grief.

Also, there’s a sprinkling of mild language, and the scares are intense enough to perhaps give pause to parents of sensitive littles (I’m a grownup, and I cringed a couple of times).

Overall, Sketch is 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.

Shockingly, YouTube’s The Critical Drinker, who doesn’t like a whole lot lately, actually liked Sketch:

Collaring a Harmon Brother at the Sketch Premiere

Last week, I attended an Angel premiere for the film, primarily for Angel Guild members — and few invited guests (like me). It was held at my favorite theater in Los Angeles, in the Playa Vista development not far from the coast.

I ducked into my usual perch in a recliner in the dine-in section in a balcony above the main theater, so I didn’t see the reaction of the folks below. But, I did hear it afterward, and it was enthusiastic.

Angel Studios co-founder Neal Harmon (that’s him above, posing on the red carpet) 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.

I grabbed him for a few minutes to chat after the screening. We have talked before, back in 2022, when Angel was first hitting big with The Chosen (click here to read the story, which outlines Angel’s origins as VidAngel, its financial ups and downs, and how it launched its equity crowdfunding model).

With its Angel Guild, the company continues to find different ways to develop and fund programming — and to choose which films to distribute.

Harmon said:

With every film that we release, we hear a similar kind of response. “Oh, this isn’t what we thought Angel is.” And it only takes time, or it takes someone joining the Angel Guild themselves and voting, to realize what Angel is.

Angel is the voice of the audience, with a North Star. The North Stars tell stories that amplify light. And there are stories that make the world a better place.

The Angel Guild votes on every story that comes to Angel before we’ll release it. And that’s the thread. And if the story has light, if it’s filled with hope, it has a good message and it’s excellent, it’s well-made, then it can find a home on Angel.

Asked what his vision is for Angel’s future, Harmon said:

We believe this is where the innovation is happening right now in storytelling. It’s where people feel soul in the stories that are coming out of these mission-driven and passionate filmmakers and community.

Everything that we’re trying to build here, it’s very exciting. And I think the Angel Guild probably keeps some of the studio execs up at night.

Angel Plans to Join the Stock Market

Harmon also revealed:

We are going to be a publicly traded company this year.

And we’ll be traded under ANGX, and that will be a symbol of the movement. We have over 31,000 investors in Angel. This will provide a way for them to get liquidity, but also to track the progress of the movement.

Beyond that, we are going to grow to five and then to 10 million guild members. And then we’re going to grow out globally and start building guilds in other places. And then if we’re really fortunate, a lot of other players will start copying what we’re doing.

Click here for Angel’s more detailed press release on the plans.

Hearing From Seth Worley

At a Q&A for Worley and the main cast 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: