Home Alone 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Home Alone 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Disney has released the ever-popular 1990 Chris Columbus film 'Home Alone' to the UHD format. The UHD disc includes a new 2160p/HDR video presentation. The disc simply repurposes the existing DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The UHD disc includes no extras but the bundled Blu-ray, which includes a new transfer (thanks to user J-Mart for the tip) but is otherwise identical to the remastered Blu-ray 20th Century Fox released in 2015, includes several bonuses.

Home Alone 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The included screenshots are sourced from a 1080p Blu-ray disc.

It takes very little time for Home Alone to demonstrate its dazzling UHD delights and its HDR highlights. Look at the white opening titles. The new color spectrum turns them into beautifully crisp, bright, high luminance letters that are significantly superior to the Blu-ray presentation, which looks dull and flat in comparison. Add in white-t-shirts, white trim inside and outside the house, and of course white snow seen during the daytime and just one color portends great things for the transfer. Home Alone's entire palette is just as striking, bringing a significant amount of newfound depth and color clarity across the spectrum. Look in chapter six, the morning the family leaves for Paris. The blue airport vans, the blue sky over the house, and the red bricks all enjoy a gargantuan improvement to contrast, depth, and nuance. Look at a shot showing the length of the kitchen at the 18:18 mark. The deep brown-red tile flooring and wooden cabinets along the bar, and the blue titles atop of it, take on much fuller, far more commanding color space accuracy and vitality. Such observations hold true throughout. HDR brings no shortage of superior color workmanship to the film, in bright daytime, low light nighttime exteriors, or warmly lit home scenes. Add in superior black levels -- fine-tuned depth and shadow detail beyond the Blu-ray's capabilities -- and Home Alone's UHD serves as an amazing revelation for the film and a fine example of just how far HDR can improve a picture without performing any fundamental transformations, just solidifying what's already there.

Just as wonderful are the textural improvements. The 2160p resolution renders the film source as tack-sharp. The picture appears greatly improved beginning to end for overall clarity and definition, whether intimate character portraits, clothing, or the densely packed and finely furnished home, from attic to basement and everything in between. The picture holds steady to a light, pleasing grain structure that is more visible compared to the remastered Blu-ray. It's flattering and not at all intrusive. There are a couple of problem areas, though, that keep the image from earning a perfect score. That grain has been manipulated a bit and sometimes moves inorganically, pulling about here and there in sync with head movements. Look at the famous aftershave scene at the 36:22 mark for a good example of it moving with Kevin's head. It can be seen again at the 51:30 mark in another similar scene. The very odd stray speckle appears here and there and there's some weird shaking along the top left corner of the screen at the 36:24 mark, an otherwise static exterior shot showing the McCallister home. But even with sometimes wonky grain management, the signs of digital tinkering are very few and far between. Largely, this is a natural, filmic, picture-perfect UHD that will assuredly delight fans.

Home Alone 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Rather than remix to Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, Disney has simply repurposed the existing, and perfectly capable, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. For a full audio review, please click here.

Home Alone 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The new UHD disc for Home Alone contains no supplements but the bundled Blu-ray, supplementally identical to that which 20th Century Fox released in 2015, contains a decent array of bonus features. See below for a listing of what's included and please click here for coverage. A Movies Anywhere digital copy code is included with purchase. This release ships with a slipcover.

• 1990 Press Featurette
• The Making of Home Alone
• Mac Cam: Behind the Scenes with Macauley Culkin
• How to Burglar Proof Your Home: The Stunts of Home Alone
• Home Alone Around the World
• Where's Buzz Now?
• Angels with Filthy Souls
• Deleted Scenes/Alternate Takes
• Blooper Reel
• Audio Commentary
• Theatrical Trailers

Home Alone 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Home Alone holds up after three decades of delighting fans of all ages and its new UHD release is a stunner. The 2160p/HDR picture quality teeters on perfection and while Disney has not included a new soundtrack or any new extras, that existing content is just fine. There's also a SteelBook packaging variant. Highly recommended.