The picture, for reasons that are 99% related to the theatrical marketplace, came and went in theaters last month. But the early days of August brought not one but two excellent original thrillers that play like newfangled horror fantasies filtered through the world as it is today. WB helped turn Weapons into a sleeper smash hit, which should, by the time you read this, zoom past the unadjusted $137.4 million domestic total of The Conjuring. Meanwhile, strong buzz and good reviews notwithstanding, Sketch (review) was notable primarily for being Angel Studios’ first festival acquisition and, relatively speaking, their first theatrical flick not explicitly predicated on Christian dogma.

The good news is that, with the latter available to rent or buy digitally (and/or watch for free if you’re an Angel Guild member), you can catch up with the film just as you did with many (if not most) of your childhood favorites, namely at home. And while the terrific picture was no box office smash ($8 million, low even by Angel Studios standards), it’s also cheap enough perhaps to become an old-school post-theatrical favorite akin to Labrynth, The Monster Squad and (budget notwithstanding) The Iron Giant. That’s just one issue I discussed with writer/director Seth Worley in this (edited for time and clarity) 45-minute conversation.

The other topics include the real-world influences, the origins of the film’s high concept (a young girl whose macabre drawings come to life and wreak kaiju-style chaos amid her small town), the challenges of crafting an Amblin-worthy all-quadrant horror fantasy on a comparatively low budget, the obsticles in getting the money folks to roll the dice on an unapologetically emotional non-IP fantasy film, and Sketch’s surprising fate as a secular crowdpleaser from a (primarily) religious distributor. There’s more of course, but the crux is that I dug the hell out of Sketch, and I wanted to talk to the guy who made it.

In a world where movies like Bumblebee earn kudos and huzzahs for approximating the very kind of “kid and their magic pet” fantasies that the Transformers movies put out of business, Sketch never had a shot in heck at Free Willy or even Earth to Echo-level box office. However, the film got made, it was a nationwide theatrical release, and I hope that it becomes a genuine post-theatrical cult favorite. Anyway, I hope you enjoy. If anyone in Hollywood is listening to this, if you want me to potentially pretend to give a damn about Gremlins 3, Goonies 2, Second-to-Last-Starfighter, or what-have-you…

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