Most people have, at least once, stared at a shuttered mall after hours and wondered what happens when the lights go out. Do the escalators hum in the dark? Do mannequins stand frozen like silent witnesses? The idea that someone or something might still be inside has long lived at the edge of the imagination. But what if that unsettling thought was not just a passing fantasy? What if people really did stay behind?

A newly released Netflix documentary taps directly into that eerie curiosity, not through fiction, not through urban legends, but through a story that actually happened. 

The documentary in question is Secret Mall Apartment, a modest indie documentary that had its 2025 theatrical run.  While its box office numbers were small by blockbuster standards, the film found steady interest, selling an estimated 75,000 tickets during its run. Now, nearly a year later, its arrival on Netflix has given it a second life. 

Since hitting the platform, the documentary, directed by Jeremy Workman, has climbed into the Netflix Top 10, however its stay was impermanent, but its impact is not. Streaming metrics can be opaque, however Secret Mall Apartment has garnered 98% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. It is safe to say the audience has multiplied dramatically, pushing this once-niche story into far more living rooms than its theatrical release ever could.

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What makes the film especially compelling is how it unspools like a speculative question rather than a crime story. It invites viewers to imagine possibilities first, then calmly reveals that those possibilities were real.

Secret Mall Apartment centers on a group of Providence-based artists in the early 2000s, frustrated by how the newly opened Providence Place mall reshaped their neighborhood. The massive late-’90s development didn’t just change the skyline; it quietly erased creative communities in its orbit.

Michael Townsend, the informal leader of the group, noticed an unused space during the mall’s construction, an awkward pocket that slipped through official planning. Once the mall opened, he and his collaborators searched for it and found a forgotten storage area, sealed off from daily foot traffic yet still reachable.

What began as a joke, sparked by marketing that pitched the mall as an all-in-one lifestyle destination, slowly became something astonishing. Townsend, his then-wife, and friends transformed the hidden space into a functional living area, complete with furniture, decor, and shared purpose. 

In the end, Secret Mall Apartment is oddly tender. It is about resistance, imagination, and the places we overlook every day.

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What do you make of it? Urban myth turned art project, or a quiet act of rebellion? Share your thoughts.