At 30, Home Alone is all grown up — but still great childish fun

Macaulay Culkin impressed from the start and made this role his own

Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is left Home Alone

A precocious eight-year-old develops a murderous streak after his family forgets to bring him on holiday. Whatever way you look at it, that’s the premise (well, sort of) at the heart of John Hughes and Chris Columbus’s Home Alone — an absurd home-invasion flick all dressed up as a wholesome yuletide comedy.

Released in cinemas 30 years ago this month, Hughes’s holiday masterwork — one-part Straw Dogs, two-parts Planes, Trains and Automobiles — came about when he least expected it. The story goes that Hughes, the Hollywood king of 1980s teen comedy, was packing for a vacation when a peculiar thought crossed his mind. “[I was] making a list of everything I didn’t want to forget”, he’d later recall. “I thought, ‘Well, I’d better not forget my kids.’ Then I thought, ‘What if I left my 10-year-old son at home? What would he do?’”