When you leave a kid home alone, he’s going to cause some mischief. Some much-needed mischief in fact—at least when a pair of burglars/potential kidnappers come around.

This holiday season, Disney+ debuts a new installment in the Home Alone franchise, Home Sweet Home Alone. And though Kevin McCallister has long since grown up, one Max Mercer (Archie Yates) is ready to fill that holiday prank void.

Icy walkways and swinging pendulums of doom abound. When it comes to defending his home with elaborate booby traps, Max doesn’t pull his punches. He’s all too willing to send his tormentors all the painful hurdles they can handle.

Archie Yates as Max in HOME SWEET HOME ALONE, exclusively on Disney+. Photo by courtesy of Disney+. © 2021 20th Century Studios.

Of course, our characters take the abuse in stride. But in real life, those “pranks” would be a lot harder to deal with. 

So when sitting down with Home Sweet Home Alone star Ally Maki, we had to ask—which of Max’s pranks would cause her to call it quits? The worst of the worst?

“The pool!” Maki answers with no hesitation.

In the film, the McKenzies (played by Ellie Kemper and Rob Delaney) attempt to sneak into Max’s house through the back door. Unfortunately, that leads them to creep right over a tarped-over in-ground pool, plunging into the freezing snow-covered depths.

“We were freezing, ‘cause it was actually snowing there [on set],” explains Maki. “So I can’t imagine going into an ice-cold pool in the middle of a snowstorm. That seems horrifying, that’s something I would never want to do.”

Personally, I’m saying “no” to taking a pool ball to the forehead over falling in an icy pool any day, but hey, that’s the beauty of Home Alone, isn’t it? To each their own horrifying trap.

To learn more about Maki’s experience working on Home Sweet Home Alone, check out our interview below.

You can see Maki in Home Sweet Home Alone, now streaming exclusively on Disney+.