Photo: 20th Century Fox
‘Home Alone ’ is one of the most popular holiday movies of all time. Along with the likes of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ ‘Scrooged,’ and ‘Christmas Vacation,’ it’s the kind of movie we eagerly await when the holiday season is finally upon us. We all know about the memorable sequel ‘Home Alone 2: Lost in New York’ that came out two years later. But did you know that, including the recently released ‘Home Sweet Home Alone,’ there has been a total of six movies ?
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that many of them are completely unwatchable, gimmicky rip-offs. But some are actually worth your time. Below, we watched and ranked each and every one (we even watched the horrible ones) so you don’t have to.
Ranked! Home Alone Movies
6) Home Alone 4: Taking Back The House (2002)
In this disaster of a TV movie, a recast Kevin McCallister, who for some unknown reason hasn’t aged, is in the midst of his parents’ divorce. He decides to celebrate Christmas with his dad at his new girlfriend’s mansion. For some reason a royal family from some other country is also there visiting and Kevin has to find cliché ways to keep him safe from abduction.
5) Home Alone: The Holiday Heist (2012)
In this extremely unnecessary unwatchable money grab, a boy named Finn Baxter decides to (surprise surprise) set up booby traps to catch a ghost he believes in in his home and then, in a twist that’s easier to spot than the Great Wall of China, he needs to protect his house from a gaggle of burglars.
4) Home Alone 3 (1997)
For some absolute unfathomable reason, John Hughes actually wrote this abysmal movie that apparently has nothing to do with the earlier movies as the main character is a boy named Alex Pruitt. In this cringe-worthy rip-off, Pruitt has to stop a group of spies from getting a top-secret computer chip that is for some reason in his toy car.
3) Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)
This movie isn’t very highly rated, and it is silly and over-the-top. That being said, this story of a little boy who thinks a couple wants to kidnap him and sell him to an old lady, is fairly entertaining. The main character portrayed by ‘Jojo Rabbit’ actor Archie Yates is funny and mischievous and the couple played by Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney are bumbling and uncomfortable.
2) Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)
This movie, like the original, still holds up. It takes place a year after the original and instead of being left home alone. Kevin McCallister (still played by Macauley Culkin) ends up on New York City alone and runs into the “wet bandits” he put away in the first movie and they’re not happy to see him. Hilarity ensues.
1) Home Alone (1990)
There’s no topping the original. Every other movie is just a rehashing of the story of Kevin McCallister who is mistakenly left home alone while the rest of his family flies to Paris. A pair of criminals decide to rob his house and he protects it with hilarious, cartoonish booby traps.