Doctor Sleep: Why Baseball Boy’s Death Scene Was Almost Even Worse

The death of Jacob Tremblay’s “Baseball Boy” in Doctor Sleep was the most brutal scene in the film—but it was almost worse. Doctor Sleep author Stephen King intervened, and convinced director Mike Flanagan to scale it back a bit.

Baseball Boy died at the hands of The True Knot in Doctor Sleep. The movie follows the nomadic cannibals as they feed on the “steam” that comes from killing people gifted with the Shine, such as Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) and Abra Stone (Kyleigh Curran). Dan and Abra deduced that Baseball Boy was the True Knot’s next victim, so they raced to save him. However, they failed, and audiences saw that failure depicted during the young boy’s graphic death scene.

The scene is heartbreaking and hard to watch—Baseball Boy cries, screams, and begs as the True Knot tears him apart. Flanagan initially had the group get in a few additional stabs before King convinced him to tone the brutal scene down. Here’s why King’s recommendation ultimately benefited Doctor Sleep.

Toning Down Baseball Boy’s Death Benefited Doctor Sleep

Kids are not exempt from the horrific scenarios endured in Stephen King stories. IT has an iconic opening sequence that ends with Pennywise brutally killing Georgie. Audiences witness Pennywise rip the boy’s arm off, but the clown drags him into the sewer to finish him off. How these events play out takes the viewer to the brink of what’s bearable to watch, but spares them the gory details, as Georgie is killed off-screen. With Baseball Boy’s in Doctor Sleep, Flanagan mirrors Georgie’s death by showing a child enduring a violent and painful death. However, Flanagan drags out Baseball Boy’s death, nearly to the point of excess. Extending that scene would have just been violence for the sake of violence.

When it comes to gore in horror movies, sometimes too much is counterintuitive. Being violent for the sake of being violence sometimes borders on torture porn, which has been popular in the horror genre, but isn’t usually geared toward child victims for numerous reasons. The theatrical cut of Baseball Boy’s death scene in The Shining sequel is already heartbreaking and nearly too brutal to watch without the extra details. By choosing to pull back from his original vision just a little bit, Flanagan left something up to audience’s imaginations.

Whatever audiences envisioned happened in the last moments of that poor boy’s life are probably far more horrifying than anything that could have been shown on the screen. Besides, the King of Horror himself told Flanagan he took the scene a little too far; this speaks for itself. By heeding King’s wise advice, Flanagan pulled off a death scene in Doctor Sleep that was equal parts gut-wrenching and terrifying, without taking advantage of his audience’s emotions.

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