I Think I’m Gonna Die in This House: The Criminal Mind of Kevin McCallister
Eilidh Paterson
The recent loss of Catherine O’Hara marked, for me, a period of mourning bookended by a return to the comfort – or perhaps domestic terror – of Chris Columbus’ Home Alone films. Simultaneously, horrifying TikTok edits of The Wet Bandits’ experience inside Kevin’s home to I Think I’m Gonna Die in This House truly sparked questions about Kevin’s morality. Naturally, I exclude the terrible three through six. Without Macaulay Culkin, O’Hara, Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern, and the charming Buzz (Devin Ratray), the later films fall abysmally flat. The originals endure because they filter utter brutality through Christmas nostalgia.
What intrigues me most is not the festivity but the slippery slope Kevin embarks on, from personal protection to sadistic enjoyment. His campaign against Harry and Marv begins defensively. After recognising Harry via his frightful golden tooth, Kevin promises: “When those guys come back, I’ll be ready”. At first, “ready” means ingenuity. Kevin uses mannequins, a Michael Jordan cutout, and gangster film audio to simulate life inside the vacuous home.
But somewhere between defensive ingenuity and blowtorching a man’s scalp, the line blurs.
After overhearing the bandits state their intentions to return to the house at 9pm, Kevin goes to visit Santa. Instead of asking for police protection, he asks for the return of his family. When he reconciles with his other living nightmare at church – elderly neighbour Marley (Roberts Blossom) – Kevin plays Dr Phil and encourages him to reach out to his estranged son, rather than inform him of the impending burglary.
Kevin’s intelligence is overt. He does the washing, he shops. He aims his sledge at the perfect angle to fly out the front door from the top of the staircase.
Why, then, does he not ask adults for help?
Two answers present themselves, and the former instigates the latter.
First: adults have failed him. Uncle Frank (Gerry Bamman) is a tyrant. The charming Buzz is a torturer. He’s dubbed “such a disease” and is abandoned. Kevin inhabits a topsy-turvy world where his faith in himself exceeds his faith in authority.
The second: Kevin delights in this. He’s powerless in the bustling household which sees him forced to share a bed with Kieran Culkin’s Fuller. Once home alone, power is gained, and Kevin maximizes it. He reveals something crucial to Marley, explaining that his basement had “bothered him for years,” but, “if you turn on the lights, it’s no big deal.” In a single weekend, Kevin has speed-run adolescence. He confronts fear, masters it, and discovers the intoxication of control: “This is my house. I have to defend it.”
What ensues is a machievallian house of horror.
Harry is shot in the groin with a BB gun. Marv is greeted with a cheerful “Hello!” before being shot in the face. The bandits should be dead as Marv slips down stairs coated in ice, endures an iron to the head and steps on a meticulously placed nail. I truly wonder how Marv sustains himself. But his morale pervades as he maintains, “I’m gonna kill that kid”.
A superheated doorknob and a blowtorch to Harry’s scalp reveal Kevin’s budding pyromania. Harry is coated in plastic wrap, then submerged in feathers – a stark change in textiles. When the two crooks finally reunite, Marv demands “why the hell are you dressed like a chicken?” elucidating that it is about degradation over delay. We are meant to laugh, but beneath the surface lies intrinsic sadism, and only when playtime is dwindling does Kevin finally call the police.
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York intensifies the psychology. The suburban paint cans evolve into urban bricks hurled from a rooftop. After two direct hits, Marv momentarily loses vision, which he has no time to regain before a third, a fourth and an especially deadly fifth brick descend. Afterwards, he is shot by a nail gun, electrocuted, and coated in blue paint. To wash away the sins of his breaking and entering, he approaches a sink. When Marv grabs the taps he becomes the conductor for a lengthy (21 second) shock. His hair grows, his screams crescendo, and for a split second Marv even regresses to skeleton form, expounding the barbarity of Kevin’s technique. We even see Kevin behind the apparatus actively increasing the voltage. At this point, decidedly, Marv is dead and his appearance in the rest of the film is that of a Christmas-esque spectre.
The shift from domestic to industrial weaponry, from Winnetka to New York, mirrors Kevin’s escalation. Nail becomes nail gun. Feathers become steel tools. Cans become bricks. The traps are cleaner, harsher, more mechanised. Kevin adapts seamlessly to his environment, dominating its boundaries.
Kevin’s refusal to invoke police protection not only signals his disbelief in authority but his desire to act without it, demanding full reign. Both movies flow from initial delight at the freedoms granted by an absent family, to momentary fear of the burglars, back to delight at becoming their puppet master. Beyond John Williams’ score, twinkling lights and the overarching sentiments of Saint Nick lies a story about the discovery of power. If it weren’t Christmas, Kevin would be a murderer.
