This theory has been kicked around a bit here and there but it makes more and more sense as it’s continually repeated despite any pesky logic stating that Kevin wouldn’t be nearly as old as Jigsaw. The manner in which both of them go around making their traps and setting up situations that are implausible but fully capable doing massive amounts of damage is hard to ignore. While Kevin’s might be a little more, okay a lot more, juvenile they’re still devilishly clever and could be the beginnings of something that might lead to even bigger and more elaborate traps in the future since when you look at it, Jigsaw is just an older, more sadistic version of Kevin McAllister that went down a very, very dark road. Ronan O’Shea of Lad Bible took the time to express this theory a bit and in a lot of ways it does make some kind of sense when you look at the beginnings of a serial killer and start to come to the understanding of just what Kevin really went through.
Let’s look at it this way, Kevin’s parents left him home alone, twice. Somehow they forgot that they had a younger son, twice. He was allowed on a plane in the second movie with only the word that he was following his father, no one checked on it, no one even bothered to check his ticket. From a reasonable standpoint it wouldn’t matter that all the tickets had been knocked to the ground, they could have taken the time to find his and discover that he was on the wrong flight. And the worst part? His parents didn’t notice until it was too late to do an easy turnaround. In the first movie they were already in the air, and in the second movie they’d already reached their destination. And then the family reacted pretty nonchalantly that he wasn’t there, hell Uncle Frank, jerk that he is, compared leaving Kevin to leaving his reading glasses. How badly would you think that might mess someone up? And if they were this dismissive of him every Christmas how neglectful do you think they would have been in the years after? Granted, the McAllister’s had a lot of kids and thus a full house, but Kevin drew the short end of the stick since not only did he have to deal with a house full of older siblings that tormented the hell out of him, he had to deal with parents that ended up taking the side of his older siblings more often than not. So he was more or less the whipping boy that had to fend for himself at times in order to get anything done. Really, the fact that he stood up to two inept burglars wasn’t all that surprising since he’d been fighting for a while at that point with his own family. Bill Bradley of Huffpost has more to say on this subject.
Now let’s take a look at the traps though. In the first movie they’re about as innocent and juvenile as you can expect. Micro machines that littered the floor and might be painful to step on but wouldn’t normally send someone onto their back and an iron that might have missed its mark are big missteps that were still funny when they were seen, but other traps like the heated doorknob, icy steps, blowtorch over the doorway, spike on the stairs, Christmas ornaments on the floor (ouch), and paint cans to the face were all pretty lethal in their own right since any one of them was capable of causing massive injuries on their own. Hey, if you’ve ever stepped on an ornament you know those shards are razor thin and just as capable of slicing up bare flesh. So Kevin had the engineering capability and devious intent that was needed when he was young, so it wouldn’t take much of a push to steer him in the right direction. After all, the second movie took the traps to a new level that would have annihilated Marv and Harry since there were no toys involved this time, only materials that had the capability of killing all on their own when applied in the right manner. Gina Carbone of CinemaBlend gets in the mix with her own take on the theory.
It’s hard to make the argument that Kevin wasn’t on Jigsaw’s level since the age gap between them is so great. Given decades to perfect his skill and wean the cute nature of his pranks out of the whole thing, Kevin could have easily become the Jigsaw killer, who was an expert at creating traps and devices that would ensnare and torture people, quite literally to death sometimes. It would take a great deal of personal trauma that went unresolved to make him go this far and this dark with his designs, but looking at Kevin’s childhood one can almost easily surmise that things might not have panned out the way that some people might have hoped. Think about it this way, it started out as “You guys give up, or are you thirsty for more?” and evolved to “I want to play a game.” If that doesn’t give you chills then you might need to watch Home Alone and then Saw again.
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