“The Perfect Neighbor” Crosses a Line

Early in Netflix’s true-crime documentary, “The Perfect Neighbor,” an ongoing dispute between Susan Lorincz and her neighbors in an Ocala, Florida, apartment building is succinctly summarized by an unlikely participant: eight-year-old Afrika Owens. Afrika’s mother, Ajike “AJ” Owens, 35, allowed Afrika and her older brothers, Israel and Isaac, to frequently join other neighborhood children to play games in the empty field near their home, adjacent to Lorincz’s rental unit. Despite a lack of documented evidence, Lorincz called the police multiple times to report that the children were loud and destructive, “encroaching” on his property – a key word Lorincz would continue to use in the weeks to come. During their usual response to one of Lorincz’s complaints, police asked Afrika what prompted the call. “The kids just play here, and she comes here talking,” Afrika says of Lorincz. Another friend in the group, an older child whose face is blurred in the film, adds an interesting observation: “We’re not even…we’re 11!”

That distinction between the group of Ocala neighborhood kids and their 58-year-old neighbor, Lorincz, is important in Geeta Gandbhir’s documentary, which was a hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival before Netflix acquired the film for distribution. “The Perfect Neighbor” is composed almost entirely of police body camera footage, pieced together to create a haunting account of the escalating incidents. Through several months of archival footage, the children remain confused and upset about being targeted because they are doing nothing but being kids, playing outside and being alone. And while they may not be able to make perfect sense of it, they shouldn’t have to either. Gandbhir’s film emphasizes the massive injustice of children who experience not only constant harassment from an adult, but also gratuitous prejudice and, ultimately, the ramifications of manslaughter. After an argument between Lorincz and the children on June 2, 2023, Ajike approached Lorincz’s home to talk to her neighbor and was shot through the door, dying from her injuries shortly after.

Once police arrive on scene, body camera footage captures the immediate aftermath of the violent crime, showing a neighborhood in deep distress. And as effective as these recordings are at sending a pit in the viewer’s stomach, they also give “The Perfect Neighbor” a bitter, unpleasant flavor. Gandbhir doesn’t shy away from showing the extent of the trauma as it happens, giving us a first-hand look at a tragedy unfolding in real time. But his touch is so heavy that it becomes leaden, almost overwhelming. In the chaos of Ajike’s death, viewers are forced to watch children who have already endured months of conflict at the hands of an adult learning that they have lost their mother. We don’t just feel their guilt, fear, and regret manifesting at the same time; we see it. And as moving as this show is, especially when Gandbhir points out the unfairness of America’s “stand your ground” laws, one has to wonder how far is too far when it comes to depicting a victim’s trauma for the sake of the audience’s entertainment.

While “The Perfect Neighbor” is certainly one of the best examples of true crime documentaries of the last decade, its power is hampered by the sheer scale of the film’s trauma. Gandbhir’s decision to tell this story through body camera footage and security video, as opposed to on-camera interviews with the Owens family or friends and neighbors in their Ocala community, is a smart move. Through this perspective, the audience remains engaged in the events of the film, told largely in chronological order, without unnecessary flourishes or dramatization. The style allows “The Perfect Neighbor” to stand out from the pack of true crime documentaries and series proliferating on streaming platforms, many of which are constructed with far less grace than Gandbhir’s film.

But just because something looks and feels like a more considered, thoughtful true-crime offering doesn’t mean it can’t be undone by the same trappings of the genre. With the growing popularity of true crime over the past 15 years, the public has become increasingly desensitized. Shots of graphic violence, crime scenes and dead bodies are nothing new; in fact, they are so banal that they even amount to parody. And while these aspects can be included to give viewers the full scope of a crime, they can easily become exploitative, especially since Netflix — arguably the premier true crime streaming provider — doesn’t exactly have the most sensitive touch when it comes to its library of originals. Take the 2019 documentary series “Don’t F**k with Cats,” which includes gratuitous shots of animal violence and shots of an actual snuff film. Or consider Ryan Murphy’s “Monster” series, in which the true crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein and the Menendez brothers are told in sordid and incredibly sexy detail.

While the streamer’s history of glamorizing and exaggerating heinous acts isn’t necessarily indicative of the quality of “The Perfect Neighbor,” it does cloud the documentary’s release with trepidation. As Netflix’s true crime film, “The Perfect Neighbor” gets the same kind of clickbait title treatment as a more salacious, less hard-hitting documentary on the streamer. “AJ Owens’ Mom Had the Most Heartbreaking Reaction to ‘The Perfect Neighbor,'” reads one media outlet’s search headline. Others answer questions as simple as where the crime took place, what happened to Lorincz, and why all the hype around the documentary is in the first place. One particularly telling headline, speaking to the lack of sensitivity surrounding this tragedy, reads: “Where are Ajike Owens’ children now? In their lives after their mother was shot and killed by their neighbor.” This kind of response only sensationalizes a harrowing experience that no child should have to endure, and as important and compelling as Gandbhir’s film is, it does not deter a response that treats the victims, who are still children, like clickbait fodder.

Immediately after the shooting, chaos engulfed the small street in Ocala. Before police lights cover the entire neighborhood in red and blue, we see personal security footage of the entrance to a neighbor’s house, where Ajike’s oldest son, Isaac, 12, is visibly distressed and hyperventilating, pleading for someone to call 911. This view alone is heartbreaking, like something not meant for human eyes, made worse by the fact that we are watching a child trying to help his mother at a time when every second counts. In body camera footage shortly after, viewers watch as police examine Ajike’s body, lying motionless on the ground. Among the dismay are sound bites from Ajike’s neighbors and other children. When police ask nine-year-old Israel if he is hurt, Israel responds: “No. Well, my heart is broken.”

It could be argued that Gandbhir doesn’t show us much more than we would see on the evening news, and certainly not anything more than we might already find online or in any other true crime documentary. There’s also something to be said about the power of these images in emphasizing the film’s broader discourse around “stand your ground” laws, which allow Americans to defend themselves with violent force if they feel their lives are threatened. These laws have long been the subject of criticism, with data showing that they are overwhelmingly used in cases of violence perpetrated by white individuals against black people. And while Gandbhir’s film paints a very clear picture of what happened and how Lorincz attempted to abuse these laws in his favor, it’s hard to ignore – let alone justify – just how poorly “The Perfect Neighbor” depicts the Owens’ suffering.

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The punch to the stomach comes after Ajike’s body is removed from the scene by paramedics, and the father of her children gathers them nearby to tell them what may be the worst news they will ever receive in their lives. Upon hearing the words “Mommy’s not coming back anymore”, Isaac, Israel and Afrika are hysterical, moaning and crying as they fall to the ground. Even though Gandbhir doesn’t revel in their pain, she refuses to cut it off, creating a devastating and utterly mystifying section of the film that overwhelms its larger message. Scenes like this are delicate enough to be done tastefully in dramatized films, but here the sequence seems incredibly painful. It’s infuriating, and rightly so, but watching three young children realize that their mother is gone is reminiscent of “The Perfect Neighbor” right to the line of elastic sensationalism. Considering these events happened less than two years ago, there’s also the nauseating feeling that Ajike’s children are still so young, young enough to not yet understand the potential consequences of having the most crushing moments of their lives filmed and used in a documentary for the world’s most popular streaming service. When such a distressing film is immediately followed by empty, uninformative articles asking “where are they now” questions about the grieving Owens children, one has to wonder where the line is drawn. At what point does the pursuit of an affecting emotional core become completely reckless?

This question has no simple answer, and perhaps the true crime genre is too broad and unregulated to find a moral foundation that audiences, filmmakers, and victims can all agree on. But as “The Perfect Neighbor” heads toward its inevitable end, the film’s empathy wears thin. Gandbhir is so busy ensuring that the documentary is a compelling, even invigorating, look at the dangers of “stand your ground” laws that she loses sight of her subjects in their rawest, most broken forms. Their pain is exploited to influence the viewer, and with great success. But for a film about exploiting systems for power at great cost, it’s disconcerting that “The Perfect Neighbor” harbors its most violent and lamentable images with such reckless abandon.