No, that’s okay, number doesn’t matter. I know kids die, it’s just that in movies it seems that more adults than kids are killed. There were kids in the Jurassic Park movies, but the only deaths we see, that I remember, are adults. What if a kid had been hiding in the bathroom, rather than the lawyer?
In Lord of the Flies, one of the main boys dies. It has been a long time, so I don’t remember if other boys died, too.
I feel bad for Anna Chlumsky. I think there’s a whole generation of us who think of her as “the kid who’s best friend died.”
I just watched her in Inventing Anna and that’s all I could think. The same goes for Veep.
In Deadwood, Seth Bullock’s young stepson is run over by a horse and lingers a bit before dying. I remember being surprised they had him die but it ended up being interesting the way it affected his relationship with the boy’s mother.
On-screen death of the protagonist’s brother, by the protagonist accidentally slicing him in half with a machete, in the second scene of the comedy Walk Hard (2007).
~Max
Didn’t a kid get chestbursted early on in Aliens v Predator: Requiem? That was a bit over the top.
~Max
Wrong kid died!
Dynamite (1929) – A kid gets run over offscreen (though I’m not 100% certain he dies ).
Sabotage (1936) – Young boy on bus unknowingly carries bomb which goes ka-boom.
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) – Gene Tierney lets 14-year-old Darryl Hickman drown.
The Bad Seed (1956) – 8-year-old Patty McCormack has a most spectacular demise.
Slander (1957) – 10-year-old Richard Eyer goes to the Land Beyond Beyond after getting hit by a car.
Night of the Living Dead (1968) – The Cooper’s injured young daughter has a bad night.
The Outsiders (1983)
“Stay gold Ponyboy, stay gold.”
And several others…
Max Max’s wife and kid get run over in the original, a good way into the movie so you are invested in them. Although I think they cut away to a shoe or something.
~Max
Similar to the opening of The Untouchables: Hey mister, you forgot your BOOM!
I just found out, that a girl got killed here last week, and you knew it! You knew there was a shark out there! You knew it was dangerous! But you let people go swimming anyway? You knew all those things! But still my boy is dead now. And there’s nothing you can do about it. My boy is dead. I wanted you to know that.
That was a particularly bad case of being cut in half with a machete.
And the movie that inspired the gag, the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, starts out with Cash’s older brother accidentally dying in a sawmill accident - one that, in real life, apparently nearly cut the boy in half.
Yeah, I guess people don’t realize just how easy it is to accidentally cut someone in half.
~Max
How did I forget that one?
Now, I’m beginning to realize more kids have been killed than I thought.
Max_S, I do count teens. If anyone here is into silent movies, I remember Lillian Gish’s character in Broken Blossoms was supposed to be fourteen. She was beaten to death by her own father. That was one dark film!
And the teenage girl in Jaws 2, if you count teenagers as kids.
~Max
I think it’s also a mashup with the Ray Charles biopic, where Ray Charles’ younger brother dies by drowning in a washbasin and soon after he starts to lose his vision, like Dewey Cox goes “smell blind”.
It’s what the country doctor says to the family “sorry, there’s nothing I could do. It was a particularly bad case of being cut in half with a machete.”
Coincidentally I just rewatched ‘Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” two days ago. What a criminally underrated comedy.
And at the end, the dad says he didn’t realize just how easy it is to accidentally cut someone in half.
~Max
Ratcatcher (1999): the 12-year-old main character’s best friend drowns in a canal.
Manchester by the Sea (2016): in a flashback, the main character’s children are burned to death in a house fire.