It’s become something of a cliche in recent years to have a fan theory about a popular film or TV programme that hinges on the characters all being dead. Theories like that exist for everything from Rugrats to American Horror Story, and I don't particularly want to add to the pile, but this one actually makes sense, and so far as I can tell I’m the only one to have written about it.
There are a lot of unrealistic elements to Home Alone, but the most immediately obvious is that the Wet Bandits take damage that would kill any real person, and keep going with minor injuries. Whether it’s taking multiple bricks to the head, having their skull melted by a blowtorch, or being electrocuted, the first two Home Alone films contain as much violence as any entry in the Saw franchise, and should, if they were at all realistic, have a body count to match - and yet they don’t.
The standard explanation for this is that, after all, these aren’t intended to be realist films - they’re just a bit of slapstick fluff, designed to entertain rather than to be thought about. Well, this is the internet, and no work of art gets away without being over-analysed and theorised about until it’s impossible to experience it without taking into account the sleep-deprived ramblings of someone you;ve never met. So, without further ado, here’s my theory on Home Alone 1 and 2.
The Wet Bandits are in Hell after being executed for murdering Kevin McAllister, and their punishment is to face off against him over and over again, and lose. Let’s look at the evidence:
Exhibit A: The Traps
Kevin McAllister is at an age where most kids are still figuring out that it’s not okay to pick your nose in public, and yet when the Wet Bandits try to rob his house he deals with them with all the expertise of a Vietnamese freedom fighter. The traps he builds are the kind of thing that a child might imagine, but would never have to practical skills to set up - unless the child had been gifted with supernatural Rube Goldberg powers to take revenge on his killers, of course.
Exhibit B: The Resilience of the Wet Bandits
I’ve gone into this above, and this video goes into more detail - basically, the Wet Bandits would have died dozens of times over in real life, yet they are barely even slowed down in the film. Ghosts, I tell you.
Exhibit C: The Wet Bandits’ Willingness to Kill
In the first film, the Wet Bandits eventually get into the house and catch Kevin, and they’re understandably pissed off. Most people, though, would think twice about killing a kid - especially when they’ve never committed anything more serious than burglary and vandalism up until this point. The Wet Bandits, though, are more than willing to jump straight from a routine B&E to the torture and murder of a child - and they would have gone through with it, too, if it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of the spooky neighbour who Kevin was frightened of earlier in the film.
Generally speaking, when burglars are interrupted, their most common reaction is to run away - it’s just not worth fighting you over your DVD player. Escalating from burglary to assault and home invasion brings with it a significant increase in both the chances and the consequences of being caught, and for a lot of petty criminals it just isn’t worth the trouble. It’s even more unlikely for a burglar to kill the occupant of a house in order to complete the robbery - it happens, and when it does it’s horrifying, but those instances are the exception, not the rule. For most people murder is a big fucking deal - if killing a person were psychologically easy, we likely wouldn’t have survived as a species. So if it’s unusual for someone to commit an unplanned murder in order to facilitate a burglary, how much more unlikely is it for someone to decide, on the spur of the moment, to torture a child to death (the Wet Bandits are pretty grpahic about what they plan to do to Kevin)? Unless, of course, they already did it. These guys would kill a child, because they have killed a child - this very child, in fact. And here’s where it got them - trapped in an endless loop, facing off against their victim over and over again, and coming off considerably worse.
Exhibit D:
What are the odds of someone forgetting their child not once, but twice? Come the fuck on.
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