Secret Mall Apartment (2024) Review: Squatting as Art

Is Secret Mall Apartment worth watching?

Yes. Secret Mall Apartment is one of the most purely enjoyable documentaries of recent years, a true story so unlikely that it plays like a heist comedy, with a sharper idea underneath. Jeremy Workman treats his subjects’ four-year secret with obvious affection, and their own home-video footage gives the film an immediacy no reconstruction could match. The reservation is that the film is more in love with its subjects than curious about them, so a few harder questions about the stunt are raised and then set aside.

What is Secret Mall Apartment about?

Secret Mall Apartment tells the story of eight Rhode Islanders who, in 2003, built a hidden apartment inside the Providence Place Mall, a busy shopping centre in the middle of the city. Led by artist Michael Townsend, the group found an unused space inside the building, furnished it piece by piece and kept it going for four years without the mall knowing.

Crucially, they filmed almost everything. Workman builds his documentary around that footage, following the project from its first nervous visits to its surprisingly domestic routines, and pairs it with present-day interviews with Townsend, Colin Bliss, Adriana Valdez-Young and others involved.

It is an American documentary in English, directed by Workman, and it runs 92 minutes. It premiered at SXSW in 2024. Although some catalogues list it as a drama, it is a non-fiction film throughout.

The found footage does the storytelling

The film’s biggest asset is the material its subjects shot at the time. Grainy early-2000s video shows the group smuggling in furniture, building walls and relaxing in a space that should not exist, and the sense of mischief is irresistible. Workman lets that footage run long enough for its details to land: the ordinary objects, the jokes among friends, the constant low hum of the mall outside.

That archive also makes the film feel less like a stunt reconstructed for the camera than a document of a real, if eccentric, way of living. It is one thing to hear that people lived in a mall; it is another to watch them set out dinner in it.

A prank with a point about public space

What lifts the film above a funny anecdote is the question hovering over it. Malls present themselves as public spaces built for everyone, yet they exist to sell, and the group’s project takes that promise almost literally. Workman frames the apartment as both an art project and a quiet protest against commercial development, and the interviews let the participants explain what drew them to the idea without turning it into a lecture.

The humour and the critique work together. Much of the comedy comes from the gap between the mall’s polished image and the scrappy home tucked inside it, and that gap is also the film’s argument.

Where affection softens the edges

Workman is plainly on his subjects’ side, and that sympathy is part of the film’s charm. It also means some tensions, such as the legal risks, the burden on the mall’s workers, and the gap between art and trespass, get less scrutiny than they could. Viewers who want a more probing examination of the participants or their choices may find the documentary a little too comfortable. The film is also most exciting in its first half, when the secret is new, and slows once the routine is established.

Who should watch Secret Mall Apartment?

It suits documentary fans, anyone who enjoys true stories about eccentric projects, and viewers interested in art, cities and consumer culture. At a little over 90 minutes it is an easy single sitting, and it contains nothing more challenging than mild language and some rule-breaking, making it suitable for teenagers and families with older children.

For different takes on obsession and ingenuity from Celluloid’s drama shelf:

• Whiplash, a fiction film about someone giving everything to an all-consuming project.
• The Shawshank Redemption, a very different story about patience and ingenuity inside an institution.

The verdict

Secret Mall Apartment is a delightful, sneakily thoughtful documentary that turns an absurd real-life secret into a story about community, creativity and who gets to use public space. Its admiration for its subjects occasionally blunts its curiosity, but it is warm, funny and hard not to recommend.

Rating: 4.1/5