Family-friendly films that persuasively deal with childhood grief are rare, and writer/director Seth Worley takes a cheekily original approach with this enjoyable little indie. His touch is Spielberg lite.
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| Amber (Bianca Belle, left), her brother Jack (Kue Lawrence, center) and tag-along frenemy Bowman (Kalon Cox) are horrified to discover that they're being stalked by the enormous "Blind One," one of many creatures brought to life from Amber's imagination. |
Amber isn’t quite a brat, but she’s willful, sullen, disrespectful and difficult to handle.
Her 12-year-old brother Jack (Kue Lawrence) and their father, Taylor (Tony Hale), are stoic on the subject ... primarily because the latter has removed all traces of Ally from the house, which he also intends to sell as quickly as possible. Their refusal to face the loss is perhaps even less healthy, but Taylor is stuck; up to this point, Jack has quietly followed his lead.
Worley takes his time with this first act, establishing the daily school bus dynamics between these three children and several others, and the easily exasperated driver, Miss Thompson (Randa Newman). Taylor has put his Realtor sister Liz (D’Arcy Carden) in charge of selling the house; she cautions him every day to be absent when prospective buyers are expected, but — in a cute running gag — something always forces him to interrupt, much to Liz’s eye-rolling vexation.
Liz gets it, though; at one telling moment, she asks if Taylor truly wants to sell the house.
He briefly hesitates, prompting her to say, “You paused” (a line we’ll hear again).
When some of Amber’s drawings come to the attention of school counselor Dr. Land (Nadia Benavides, marvelous in this brief role), the girl is surprised by the result. Instead of a lecture, she’s given a fresh notebook, as Dr. Land points out that it’s better to put the darkness on paper, rather than leaving it bottled up inside, where it could fester and prompt harmful, real-life behavior.
She begins to fill the notebook pages with renewed enthusiasm, and eventually — at a crucial bonding moment — allows her father to see what she has drawn. This is a wonderful scene, with the two of them seated in the family car, particularly when Taylor is given the opportunity to prove how much his loves his daughter. Hale and Belle are note-perfect.
Meanwhile ... while exploring the nearby woods, texting and not paying attention to his surroundings, Jack stumbles, crashes down a slope, and stops at the edge of a large pond. His hand is badly cut; his phone falls into the water. When fished out, the screen is cracked.
The following morning, Jack is surprised to see that his hand is fully healed, the phone good as new. Further experimentation reveals that the pond has the ability to make things whole.
Jack gets an idea: precisely the sort that would occur to a grieving adolescent. Amber, horrified by his intentions, struggles with him at the edge of the pond; her notebook falls into the water. When she retrieves it, all the pages are blank ... and the water begins to churn madly.
The two stare at the pond for a moment, then bolt. “Don’t tell Dad,” Jack cautions, the line delivered so well by Lawrence that it generates a laugh.
Worley uncorks a few more laugh-out-loud one-liners, as the subsequent chaos ensues ... because all of Amber’s drawings suddenly come to life.
Their appearance is special-effects genius, because they reflect the scribbly, colorfully messy aesthetic of her drawings. They’re also textured according to Amber’s choice of medium, and thus look like — and frequently shed — crayon wax, chalk powder, pencil shavings or glitter.
They’re richly imaginative, and Amber also gave them names. “Eyeders” are chalky, bright orange eyeballs with spider legs: mischievous little thieves that swarm in the thousands. The massive “Blind One” is all teeth and gaping mouth, ready to devour, but lacking eyes; it relies on the much smaller “Tattler” to find nearby prey. A seemingly ordinary, orange-striped cat ... is anything but.
Then there’s Dave.
Amber, Jack and their school mates encounter the enormous, bright blue Dave during their bus ride to school the following morning. This kicks off the film’s wild and frantic second half, as the kids — and the entire town — battle for their lives against an endless barrage of astonishing creatures.
Since this is a family-friendly adventure, what follows is fun-scary, but Worley packs some surprising jolts into the mayhem. Amber, Jack and Bowman — the latter unwilling to be left behind — devise some hilariously kid-oriented methods of fighting back.
Bowman also uncorks another great one-liner, delivered by Cox with deadpan hilarity: “I’d like to go indoors now.”
Taylor and Liz also face their share of beasties, the latter reluctantly acknowledging the obvious after getting covered in colorful chalk dust.
And who — or what — is the dark-hooded figure that radiates such malevolence, as it stands at the edge of the pond?
Worley doesn’t overlook the story’s emotional heart, during the lunatic final act; we know that Taylor and his two children must find their way back to family harmony. Hale, Belle and Lawrence persuasively handle this transition, and Jack has a climactic moment that might bring a tear to the eye.
All this said, Worley’s fanciful story doesn’t withstand careful scrutiny. The pond’s initial ability to heal, or mend, isn’t quite the same as generating creatures from a scribbled page. One also wonders why this pond hasn’t been discovered before; it also remains intact, following the final few scenes. That seems a recipe for fresh mayhem.
None of that matters a jot, of course, in terms of simply kicking back and enjoying this charmer on its own level. Sketch is a lot of fun ... and also frequently poignant.
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