Secret Mall Apartment Review: Banned and Noble

Through its exploration of artistic integrity, community displacement, and creative rebellion, Secret Mall Apartment transforms an urban legend into a profound social commentary.

What starts as a quirky recount of how a group of Rhode Island artists hid in a local mall and established a home becomes a surprisingly emotional exploration of community resistance and creativity.

Chronicling how artist Michael Townsend and seven friends located, built, and maintained a fully functioning apartment inside the Providence Place Mall between 2003 and 2007, Workman primarily utilizes footage from an inexpensive Pentax Optio that Townsend carried in an Altoids tin. The cleverly concealed camera, purchased from the mall’s RadioShack, served to document the extraordinary living situation from the first exploration of the “unused space” within the mall’s interior design to their various treks carrying in furniture and cinder blocks to erect a wall and further conceal their subterfuge.

But Secret Mall Apartment is more than an entertaining oddity or report on a whimsical stunt. It unfolds into something much deeper and more unexpected. Wisely zooming out from the mall apartment and delivering a thorough history lesson of the city and land, Workman approaches his subject with curiosity and respect. These weren’t squatters with no place to live; they were artists making a statement, and their covert residence had nothing to do with avoiding rent. It was a direct reaction to the gentrification that had displaced them and their friends from their homes and studios. In reclaiming corporate space, they were asking an implicit question: who defines the terms of who gets to inhabit a city’s landscape?

The sheer volume of material, the grainy handheld footage that gives Secret Mall Apartment a near-voyeuristic quality, is astonishing and helps piece together the puzzle from all those years ago. Not that any details seem murky for anyone who was there. Eventually, they stopped filming every moment, and this is what leads to the film’s one major misstep: in an attempt to recreate moments that weren’t initially captured, Workman employs staged reenactments on a studio set that had been used as a device to allow former residents to revisit their memories. These dramatized segments feel unnecessarily awkward, particularly when compared to the wealth of genuine footage and the availability of participants to tell the story in their own words.

The film also highlights Townsend’s artistic career on a broader scale, particularly his well-known Tape Art installations, which bring collaborative, impermanent murals to public spaces. Viewing archival footage of Townsend and the apartment collective creating Tape Art in pediatric hospital wards is unpredictably moving. It illustrates how the mall apartment was not just a shrewd prank or a clever stunt but an extension of Townsend’s lifelong commitment to art as a form of community service. The emotional impact caught me completely off guard.

Adding to the film’s overall mystery is its unusual production history. Townsend spent years rejecting offers from filmmakers who wanted to tell his story before finally agreeing to Workman’s vision for how to approach it. That patience paid off because rather than sensationalizing the story or predominantly featuring white artists protesting the same gentrification minorities have faced for decades during urban development, Workman presents it with a careful balance of humor, insight, and nostalgia. Having Jesse Eisenberg as a producer lends the film additional credibility, and I don’t doubt there will be offers (or more of them) to make this a full-length narrative feature or limited streaming series.

Secret Mall Apartment will be shown at the theater inside Providence Place Mall, where its events unfolded, adding a surreal layer to the experience. This meta cinematic touch perfectly summarizes how capitalism ultimately absorbs even the most subversive acts of resistance. Although it has been almost two decades since the apartment was discovered and Townsend was subsequently charged with trespassing, his other collaborators have not been identified until now. The apartment has remained sealed, almost like a tomb. While none of the group are reunited onscreen and have gone on to lead successful artistic lives, there’s a sense that if given the opportunity, they’d use the key they all still have close by to let themselves back into their act of defiance if given the chance.

I still think about the early mornings and late nights I walked around the Mall of America coming to and from work. Before the white noise is turned on, the store soundtracks start to play, and the customers begin to buzz in, there’s a silence that surrounds you that could easily put you to sleep. It’s nothing like the clubhouse environment created in Secret Mall Apartment, but it gives you an idea of why these artists dreamt of carving out their own sanctuary amid consumer culture while questioning the commercialization of public spaces.

Secret Mall Apartment will be released in select theatres in Providence & Newport, RI on March 21, 2025, In New York City on March 26, and in Los Angeles and additional US markets from April 2.