The Perfect Neighbor
The Perfect Neighbor dropped on USA Netflix on October 17 and left viewers feeling sick to their stomachs. Director Geeta Gandbhir has used police bodycam, ringcam and phone footage, along with recorded 911 calls to share the story of the neighborhood dispute. But what started off as a minor dispute turned into something incredibly deadly. Neighbor Susan Lorincz shot and killed Ajike Owens, a young mother of four, after Lorincz relentlessly harassed the children of the neighbourhood.
She had regular phone calls to the police to complain about the children playing outside of her home. The series was originally shown at Sundance this year and acquired by Netflix for a reported $5 million (£3.7m). As it hits the streaming platform and has opened up viewership to millions, people have headed straight online to warn others. Taking to Threads, one user wrote: "10 minutes into The Perfect Neighbor and I'm already triggered and traumatised as a parent. I have no idea what happens next and what unfolds, but my mental health is warning me not to continue watching it."
USA Another wrote: "I cried for 15 minutes straight watching The Perfect Neighbor on USA Netflix. A devastating story to say the least."
Lots of viewers are now warning others not to watch it because the series is deemed so distressing, one user wrote: "I wanna watch The Perfect Neighbor but I don't feel like being mad as f**k," and another replied: "I watched it and I cried. Don't watch it."
Another person added: "Take a pause before you watch The Perfect Neighbor. I do not recommend it for sensitive individuals." Someone else wrote: "I don't recall ever breaking down watching a doc like that. I had to turn it off."
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Netflix gets a lot of flak for its documentaries. Most retellings of true-life events tend to follow a similar format. So much so that the style of documentary making has been mocked for how formulaic it can be. But every once in a while, the platform finds a diamond.
The documentary tells the tale of an incident that occurred in 2023 in a neighbourhood in Ocala, Florida. The homes here are punctuated with huge lawns and tall, bushy trees. Children are playing in the street as if it were the 90s albeit with a tad more parental supervision. But there is one person on a street in this neighbourhood who doesn’t care for the frolicking youth on her street, Susan Lorincz.
“Susan was such an outlier in this community,” Kwantu told Netflix Tudum. “When there’s a conflict in any way, she’s going to call the police.”
Indeed, The Perfect Neighbor opens on a dashcam of a police officer heading to the street in question to deal with a complaint submitted by Lorincz. This time, the children in the street were daring to play football (not on Lorincz’s property, mind you) outside and likely being rowdy. This was, reportedly, one of many complaints Lorincz made about her neighbours and their children and as the documentary unfolds over an hour and a half, one gets the sense that this neighbour has a disdain for the youngsters that surround her.
We learn that Lorincz’s neighbours have dubbed her “The Karen” and that no matter what they do, she will find a way to take issue with it and call the police. There are several points in the documentary where you can almost feel the irritation of police officers who are tired of being called to the street to address the non-issue of kids being rowdy. We ourselves found ourselves screaming “Just move” at the screen several times.
However, before too long, things escalate and Lorincz shoots one of her neighbours, Ajike “AJ” Owens, fatally wounding her.
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She said: "We had all the material, so why make them talk about what happened and relive it? The body camera footage is undeniable. It’s institutional footage, but there isn’t the bias of us as filmmakers, as journalists, or as reporters on the ground. For audiences who so often now question the veracity, authenticity, and perspective, I feel like they cannot deny that this is the series of events that happened."
Lorincz shot her neighbour in 2023 after she threw a roller skate at USA Owens' 10-year-old son as he played in the field near their home. Her son told his mum and she went to Lorincz' home and told her to come outside. Lorincz then fired a shot through the locked door, killing Owens who was unarmed and accompanied by her son.
She was arrested and charged with manslaughter with a firearm, culpable USA negligence, battery and two counts of assault. Despite please from the faily, she was not charged with second-degree murder.
What makes The Perfect Neighbor unique is how it’s filmed. That is to say, it isn’t filmed at all. Instead, Gandbhir, Kwantu, and Payne combed through mountains of police body cam footage, doorbell camera footage, and archival footage from police interviews, news reports, and courtroom coverage to tell this horrible tale. These are not actors, there are no perfectly lighted interviews with the family of the victim. This makes the emotional moments hit so much harder when they do play out. For instance, seeing Owens’ sons talking to police, knowing that she has died, and watching law enforcement 
avoid that admission until they can officially declare that she has passed, is terrifying to watch.The documentary also gives those of us outside of the US a look at just how widely US citizens are being watched. The fact that this story could be told without the need to pick up a camera once is rather alarming. And we’re not 
alone in that thinking.
At the weekend, US citizens took to the streets in the No Kings protest. Among the myriad issues being protested where the Trump administration’s use of technology, including facial recognition and phone hacking, to conduct surveillance on US citizens. This includes using drones that are meant to be used in warfare, being deployed to spy on protestors in the US. The danger here is that this surveillance can be used to target people, particularly people of colour who increasingly face queries about their origin, even if they are definitely American.
The Perfect Neighbor is yet another highlight reel that shows just how biased law enforcement is against people of colour. While the cops who had their bodycam footage used are very friendly and congenial, we also see how they kowtow to Lorincz’s claims. We don’t hear the cops warning Lorincz not to waste the police’s time over what is very clearly a trivial matter, but time and time again, the children are cautioned not to go near the house. We don’t hear the police lambasting Lorincz ever in this documentary, and even if they did and it wasn’t showcased, it clearly wasn’t enough to correct her behaviour and the problems she was causing in her neighbourhood.
Even the initial investigation is somewhat concerning with Lorincz being released and only arrested days later. She was even allowed to go back to her home, although it seems she didn’t stay there very long.
More alarming, however, is just how much people can see when they start looking. And this is only set to get worse, given that governments want to use very flawed AI in surveillance programmes. Add the fact that big tech is squarely in bed with an increasingly authoritarian US government, and things look very bleak stateside.
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The filmmakers worked closely with Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias to tell the story that played out over kids playing in the street. The documentary hopes to shed light on what happened and, more importantly, how some in the US lean on Stand Your Ground laws for nefarious acts.
Stand Your Ground laws differ from state to state in the US but, the essentially allow a person to use deadly force to defend themselves if they believe they are in danger instead of retreating in a public place.
It seems Lorincz tried to lean on this law as a defence, but this was made harder given that she was behind a locked door, and fired into that door, killing Owens. The footage of Lorincz during police interviews is very interesting as well. While her 911 call – included in the documentary – sounds like a person who regrets what she did, her interview tells a different tale.
Not only does The Perfect Neighbor serve as a warning about the increased surveillance of citizens, but it also highlights the systemic racial bias that continues to thrive in the US and many parts of the world. This is more important than ever, given the actions of the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent months.
The Perfect Neighbor is a must-watch and you can stream it on Netflix right now.
The Perfect Neighbor is the harrowing new Netflix documentary primarily using police body camera footage and security camera footage to tell the story of the death of Ajike “AJ” Shantrell Owens, who was shot and killed by her neighbor, Susan Lorincz, on June 2, 2023.
Through intense footage, The Perfect Neighbor depicts the escalating incidents that ultimately led to Owens' death. In August 2024, Lorincz was convicted of manslaughter, and in November 2024, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
"This shocking crime left my family and me engulfed in grief and confusion," filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir told Tudum in October 2025. "Ajike’s community was tight-knit, rooted in mutual support and trust. It was heartbreaking to witness how such a close environment could unravel so catastrophically."
The footage and audio recordings give viewers unprecedented access, but some facts about Owens and Lorincz didn't make it into the documentary.
Here are four jaw-dropping details The Perfect Neighbor didn't include.
The Perfect Neighbor examines Owens's death, but the documentary does not cover details about her life. She was a working mother of four children: Isaac, Afrika, Titus and Israel.
In the documentary, Owens is mentioned as the manager of a McDonald's. According to the Ocala Gazette, the fast-food restaurant was located on Highway 326 in Florida. When she wasn't at work, she was a devoted mom who enjoyed throwing a ball around."She was amazing. She was a great mother to her kids. She always went to work and came straight home to her kids," Owens' neighbor, Phyllis Wills, said on MSNBC's The ReidOut in June 2023. "When she came outside with her children, she would throw football with not only her kids, but all of the kids."
"She encouraged my son to sign up for football, and I couldn't take him because I'm working, so she went and signed him up herself and took him to football practice and all that stuff," Wills recalled.The Perfect Neighbor is a documentary that is told almost entirely using police body camera footage.According to The Guardian, the lawyers for Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the trove of footage from police body cameras, security cameras, cell phones and audio of phone calls made by Lorincz."I felt the public would never doubt its authenticity. There was no reporter on the ground with bias. Right now, there is a lot of doubt about the authenticity of things. I believed that people would trust what they were seeing as it unfolded," filmmaker Gandbhir told The Guardian about using the footage."Also, police body camera footage for people of color like myself, for Black and brown folks, oftentimes is seen as a violent tool," she continued. "The police come into our communities and, afterwards, they use body camera footage to criminalize and dehumanize us, to justify violence they may perpetrate against the community."Gandbhir added that they wanted to "take this footage and flip it on its head."
Posted on 2025/10/20 04:33 PM