If Inside Out got tangled up in a box of crayons and ran through the woods with Jurassic Park on its mind, you’d get something like Sketch – a scrappy, sincere, beautifully weird little film about grief, imagination, and the things we do to cope with how we feel.

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First-time writer-director Seth Worley has made no bones about Spielberg’s dino-saga being his north star and you can feel it in every frame: the sense of awe and wonder, the kids running from things they can’t believe, and the grown-ups struggling to keep up. But this time, the island itself is grief.

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Jack (Kue Lawrence) and Amber (breakout star Bianca Belle) have just lost their mom. Their dad (Tony Hale) is doing his best, but grief is a beast with many heads. When Amber starts channeling her pain into drawings that are too strange, scary, and brilliant for her classmates and teachers, one wise guidance counselor offers her a blank sketchbook and tells her to put her feelings in there. 

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Amber does, but Jack accidentally drops the notebook into a nearby pond – a kind of magical portal the film wisely never over-explains – and suddenly Amber’s feelings are no longer trapped on paper. They’re running around the neighborhood. And some of them have tentacles and teeth.

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What follows is equal parts Amblin adventure and Spike Jonze-esque dreamscape, with a touch of Stranger Things and a sprinkle of Pokémon chaos. But it’s the heart of Sketch that sets it apart.

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Belle is an absolute revelation as Amber, equal parts fragile and fierce, funny and raw. She’s got that wide-eyed, soul-on-display quality that made Henry Thomas unforgettable in E.T. And she’s surrounded by a charming kid ensemble, forming the kind of ragtag gang that makes you want to grab a flashlight and go hunt for oddities in your own backyard.

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The visuals are glorious. The drawings don’t try to be slick or lifelike. These are doodles with depth, sketches that emote, scribbles that skitter and stomp and vanish in puffs of pastel smoke when defeated. It’s messy magic, and it works.

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And the pacing? Sharp as a No. 2 pencil. The comedy lands, thanks in large part to some whip-smart editing, and the film moves like a kid chasing their imagination. No beat lingers too long. The script hits the funny and the feels with impressive balance, always pulling back just before things get too heavy.

Hale, known for stealing scenes in some of the best TV comedies of the last two decades, turns in something tender and grounded here. He’s a dad who’s barely holding it together, still walking around with a wife-shaped hole in his life. 

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D’Arcy Carden, as his sister Liz (and a hilariously peppy realtor trying to help him sell his house), is a comic sniper. Every line lands – but she also drops the single biggest gut-punch of the movie, a quiet one-liner that’ll catch you off-guard and knock you over. 

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Despite the film’s themes of death, grief and alienation, Sketch never wallows. Like Where the Wild Things Are, it understands that the inner lives of kids are rich and complex and sometimes scary. But they’re also resilient and full of color.

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There’s no giant set piece, no city-destroying finale. Just kids and their drawings in a sleepy little town – and it’s exactly enough. Sketch may be a small movie, but it has a gigantic heart, one that beats loud and true. It’s fun, funny, spooky, smart, and warm – the kind of movie you want to watch on a Friday night with the people you love.

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It’s a reminder to embrace your weirdness, face the monsters in your head, and trust that even the dark and scribbly parts of life can lead somewhere beautiful.