IIn the interest of public service, I must point out a trap. Yesterday a property became available on Airbnb. It’s a great house in the Chicago area, available for one night only, and it’s oddly cheap. See, this is the Home Alone house.
Apparently, for $18 (£13.50), you and three friends can spend the night at the iconic McCallister Residence. You will be greeted by the actor who played Buzz McCallister. There will be pizza and other junk food from the 90s. There will be a mirror in which you can shout. There could well be a tarantula. It all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? That is why I am convinced that whoever stays there will be robbed.
Many equally iconic movie locations have been turned into rental properties. Tony Stark’s log cabin from Avengers: Endgame is on Airbnb, for example, as is the swan house Twilight movies. You can even stay in the Spice World bus, if your interests include both claustrophobia and bouts of unwarranted nostalgia.
I have no problem with any of these properties. As the locations go, they are all relatively benign. The Cabin is where Tony Stark invented the time travel needed to defeat Thanos. The Twilight House offered young Bella Swan a safe haven from all the horny teenage vampires and werewolves who tormented her with every move. The worst thing you could expect from spending a night on the Spice World bus is an unwanted Meat Loaf cameo.
But the Home Alone house? Something is wrong. Apparently the property is being made available to coincide with the release of the Disney+ movie Home Sweet Home Alone, but that makes no sense. Why mark the release of a movie by showing people the location of the superior original? That would only underline how useless Home Sweet Home Alone is? It would be like celebrating the musical Cats by inviting you to Rebel Wilson’s house and forcing yourself to watch her sing.
No, something else must be happening. My fear, and I don’t think it’s unfounded, is that Buzz McCallister somehow fell out with the Wet Bandits. What I know doesn’t make sense, because the purpose of the Wet Bandits is to break into houses left vacant by their occupants, and not filled with a bunch of dazed, giddy moviegoers.
But times are changing. My theory is that following the events of Home Alone and Home Alone 2, the Wet Bandits became addicted to chasing. They no longer appreciate simple burglaries. Now the only thing keeping them away is the relentless psychological terrorism of strangers. Therefore, working alongside Buzz, it seems natural to assume that they have arranged for the McCallister property – a house they know inside out, remember – to be occupied by a new group of people. Once settled, the Wet Bandits will burst in, cause untold bodily harm, take all of their belongings and then leave.
One way around this would be for the guests to rig a number of violent Rube Goldberg-style devices designed to repeatedly bring the Wet Bandits to a point of death. The other, more practical way would be to not stay at the McCallister house at all. Stay home and watch Home Alone instead. The original, not the remake. You are not a monster.
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