Most of Episode 7 of The Last of Us took place in an abandoned Boston mall, frozen in time after the deadly cordyceps outbreak of 2003.
The episode was playful and romantic — and also super tense, because you spent the whole time bracing yourself for the bad stuff that was surely about to happen to Ellie and her friend/crush Riley. One of the nostalgic joys of the episode was the “character” of the mall. Looking at those stores that are long gone today but were thriving in 2003 gave me a sense of nostalgia for the malls that have since died out in my area.
The episode left me feeling really sad, sure, but it also made me think about other shows and movies that are set against the backdrop of the American mall.
As it turns out, it was easy to come up with a list of my favorites. Here are 5 shows and movies (in addition to The Last of Us) that have great moments set in that symbol of American capitalism and youth.
Mean Girls
“Get in, loser! We’re going shopping!” Regina George’s (Rachel McAdams) iconic line in Mean Girls set up the demanding, self-centered nature of her relationship with Cady (Lindsay Lohan). It also gets us to that teenage free-for-all: the mall in the early 2000s.
“We’re going shopping,” of course, is actually, “We’re going to walk around the mall and judge the other girls and gossip about the boys and even ruin a girl’s day by calling her mom and pretending to be a representative from Planned Parenthood.” Cady compares the mall to “the watering hole in Africa,” but that’s not the best metaphor. Instead, the mall represents a whole world of rules for behavior and dress that Cady doesn’t have experience with.
The mall, like school, is another setting where Regina and her friends try to set the expectations of This is just what we do. This is just another critique of mean girl culture, where money and privilege determine your place in the pecking order.
Side note: Mean Girls was released in 2004, so if you want to try to imagine the mall in The Last of Us in its glory days, just picture the Mean Girls mall.
Eighth Grade
In Eighth Grade, the mall is a much more realistic setting than Mean Girls‘ over-the-top high school hang-out. Bo Burnham’s directorial debut places our main character, Kayla, at the mall’s food court with her new, older friends. She wants to fit in, but she doesn’t know these people, who feel much older and cooler than her.
The food court is just the backdrop, but the bright lights, the overwhelming number of food options, and the chattering noise of the crowd is meant to give some of the sensory overload that Kayla is surely feeling as she tries to keep up and look cool.
The camera stays close to Kayla most of the time, revealing her nervousness that the other kids aren’t quite noticing yet.
Dawn of the Dead
George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) and the 2004 remake, directed by Zack Snyder, are both set in an abandoned shopping mall in Pennsylvania.
Zombie movies — at least the good ones — are never just about zombies. Zombie movies are social commentary films, offering pointed critiques of aspects of human behavior like racism, violence, and fear.
Both Dawn of the Dead movies place their protagonists in a mall because it is the perfect backdrop for criticizing American consumerism. The mall is not a place to be celebrated in Dawn of the Dead; it’s a symbol of American greed and the constant need for more, more, more. Just as the zombies operate in the mindless pursuit of MORE BRAINS, people do the same in pursuit of MORE STUFF.
Mallrats
Dawn of the Dead takes place when malls are first starting to be built across America, but Mallrats takes place in 1995, when the American mall was thriving. In many ways, the Eden Prairie Center Mall is exactly the kind of consumeristic playground that Dawn of the Dead was criticizing.
Of course, it’s also where our beloved cast of slackers hang out. Some movies have a great mall scene, but Mallrats is set almost entirely at the mall (like Dawn of the Dead). This isn’t Kevin Smith’s only movie tied to a specific retail location: Clerks does the same thing.
Here’s what Mallrats has going for it: it is the funniest movie that takes place at a mall. Almost all of Kevin Smith’s movies are endlessly quotable, and that includes this one. I can’t imagine life without being able to throw in a well-placed, “It’s Not A Schooner, It’s A Sailboat!” into the conversation.
Stranger Things, Season 3
A huge portion of the third season of Stranger Things takes place at the Starcourt Mall — a bastion of 1980s fashion and culture. It also created the perfect opportunity to put high school basketball heartthrob Steve into a cute little boy sailor costume for the entire season.
Of course, Starcourt Mall is not what it seems. It is the cover-up for a large Russian espionage operation related to the mysterious forces in Hawkins, Indiana. (Anyone who grew up in Indiana in the 1980s could have told you that the Starcourt Mall was WAY too big and glamorous to be in a small, farm town like Hawkins.)
In The Battle of Starcourt, season 3 comes to its climactic fight scene between the Mind Flayer and the various groups of protagonists. But before the mall is completely destroyed, we have the chance to get a glimpse back into the malls of the 1980s. Yeah, it’s a little over the top, but it also felt so familiar to many of us who grew up in the 80s!
