Childhood is full of horrors. Which is why the horror genre is full of children. Films like It, the Babadook, The Sixth Sense, Poltergeist, and many more, all feature children grappling with real, or imagined, terrors. Indeed, growing up in a fallen, evil world is a horror every child must face. It’s no wonder, then, that so many stories blend horror with the angst of childhood.
The latest film from Angel Studios, Sketch, does just that. It’s a departure from the studio’s previous films containing overt faith-based content. Which, apparently, concerns many of their core audience.
Sketch is about a widower and his children who are wrestling with the grief of their mother’s passing. The creative daughter, Amber, begins drawing monsters as a way of processing her pain. Through unusual circumstances, those sketched monsters come to life and begin terrorizing the community. The family races to stop the monsters they inadvertently released, while processing their loss and grief.
While “Sketch” has received relatively positive reviews among mainstream reviewers (the “family horror-comedy” currently stands at 96% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes), many Christian parents have objected to the film’s content.
Terry Mattingly, writing for Religion Unplugged, described some of the parental backlash Angel studio executives received to the film.
One Angel Guild member said: ‘This movie is demonic. I pulled my family out within 10 minutes.’
Others shared concerns about demons, and [Angel Studios co-founder Jeffrey] Harmon said ‘dozens and dozens and dozens’ said the movie needed a PG-13 rating because of language and horror issues.
One supporter bluntly asked if Angel is still a ‘Christian-based platform.’ Harmon stressed that its motto is that it seeks to ‘amplify light,’ but that also means ‘demons are real’ and believers must defeat them.
However, parent reviews of Sketch on the Common Sense Media page were largely mixed, many expressing anger at the “family-friendly” labeling of the film which contained mild profanity and darker content. For example, commenter GranolaMom wrote, “We naively trusted the Angel Studios label (which will now change) and Common Sense Media… There was nothing in this movie that spoke to Christian values. If you plan on watching this, please know that the movie will likely be disturbing and troubling – even for teens.” Michael W gives the film one-star, simply saying, “This is a horror movie.” Another reviewer said the film has “demonic… extremely dark spiritual undertones.” Similarly, Emily B wrote, “My kids left the theater crying. Dark and ocultic (sic)” and concluded that Common Sense Media’s endorsement of the film was “big time bait and switch” writing, “I accidentally exposed my kid to her first demonic horror movie. What a massive disappointment by Angel!!!”
Even popular influencers Damien and Kenady, who boast over 84K TikTok followers, called the film “satanic,” suggesting it contains “demonic overtones” and “a demonic spirit.” Their video review cites one-star ratings from disgruntled parents who left the theater with their children and chastises the studio for caving to worldly voices.
Of course, the backlash against Angel Studios did not go unnoticed by secular media sites, some of which gleefully mocked parents concerns about the film’s darker subject matter. The reviewer at Bloody Disgusting writes,
Concerned parents, many of whom identify as Christian moms, have taken to social media to express their disapproval — with some even calling for a boycott. These inflammatory remarks have been perpetuated by conservative voices who seemingly haven’t seen the movie.
A recent post from the film’s official Facebook page highlighting audience reviews only stoked the flames, contrasting five-star praise with one-star condemnations.
‘This movie is demonic. I pulled my family out within 10 minutes,’ reads one review. Another warns, ‘PARENTS BEWARE. Do not be fooled by the PG rating.’
So is the film worthy of such kickback? Perhaps partly. At least some of the audience response to Sketch seems to be the result of poor marketing.
One reviewer at Hollywood in Toto described this as a “what-were-they-thinking moment” for Angel Studios. “The marketing materials are sugar coating how unsettling it is,” Barry Wurst writes. Whereas the studio is selling the film as “a dark family fantasy,” the audience response is that “it’s much, much darker than that.” For one, Sketch contains frequent occurrences of mild profanity, a bugaboo for many Christian audiences. Furthermore, the film contains no overt faith elements. In fact, writer-director Seth Worley never “meant for this to be a faith-based film.” Compounding all this are the horror elements of the film, which include insinuations of bloody violence and demonic entities.
As a result of pushback against the film, Angel Studios released a statement instituting a new Recommendation rating. As Jeff Harmon, Co-Founder and Chief Content Officer for Angel put it, “The MPA, while helpful, is not precise enough for our families.” According to the updated guidelines,
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 studio’s update is, at the least, an admission of a marketing mishap.
Nevertheless, some elements of parental reaction are clearly over-the-top. In his article, Mattingly cites Steve Taylor, Christian musician and producer of the film:
‘This movie asks if children can be trusted to handle death and grief or should we try to shelter them from that,’ said Taylor, reached by telephone. ‘Some people — the new term is ‘snowplow parents’ — try to clear everything out of the way for their children. That’s an issue for Christian families and lots of other people. ‘But scary things happen in life. We have to be honest with children about that.’
Christian parents do well to monitor the media intake of their children. Like it or not, some things can be a “demonic gateway” to sin and evil. However, Christian parents are notorious for pop-cultural overreaction, often seeing all forms of fictional magic, scary images, and even profanity, as explicitly evil. Taylor is correct in the need for Christian parents to not always shield our kids from the “scary” aspects of life. While the ‘snowplow parent’ seeks to “clear everything out of the way for their children,” biblical parenting means helping our children process evil and grief in the light of the Gospel.
One Christian reviewer summarized:
There’s a moment in the film when, after seeing the shockingly dark and violent content of his troubled daughter’s sketchbook, a father encourages the girl, ‘I think life is all about balancing the good and the bad. If you don’t carry the good with you too, it will only make the bad stronger. I’m not saying get rid of the bad. I’m just saying you might want to include a little bit of the good.’ Sketch internalizes that message, balancing light and dark with an honesty that doesn’t do a disservice to either.
…Sketch allows space for some darker elements, but the emphasis is on finding light through that darkness.
The backlash to Sketch provides a unique window into contemporary Christian art and evangelical culture. On the one hand, the audience for “family friendly,” Christian content, is a devoted group. Angel Studios has, to a degree, earned that devotion. Nevertheless, this same audience can be rather unforgiving in its tolerance for PG-13 content. This makes marketing a rather tenuous affair, especially as it concerns darker thematic elements. Sadly, reactions to Sketch are a reminder of evangelicals’ Fundamentalists roots. Depicting monsters becomes perilous for the Puritan; at worst, portraying the demonic becomes a “demonic gateway.” Even if said monsters are simply stand-ins for real-world grief.
So while it’s good to see Christian studios developing darker, more “mature,” content, it’s troubling that this particular attempt was met with such disdain from so many believers. Yes, the studio is right to self-correct. Marketing matters. Nevertheless, rather than shielding our children from darkness, we Christian parents should equip them to grapple with evil and grief through the Gospel. Snowplow parenting is not biblical parenting. Because if we truly want to raise a generation of “knights,” banning “dragons” will not help.
