THE PERFECT NEIGHBOR - Mark Reviews Movies

The Perfect Neighbor, Netflix

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 9, 2025

You don't want to understand Susan Lorincz, the self-proclaimed eponymous figure of The Perfect Neighbor who is anything but that. In a country where some people feel entitled to their own version of the truth and are almost encouraged under certain laws to use firearms to solve their problems, we have to understand someone like her. Lorincz surely wasn't the first person to abuse a "stand-your-ground" law, and she won't be the last.

Director Geeta Gandbhir's documentary traces how a dispute between neighbors quite suddenly and without warning escalated to Lorincz shooting Ajike "AJ" Owens, who lived across the street with her four children. The majority of the footage from the first section of the film comes from police bodycams, because Lorincz was quick to call the cops anytime the kids of this little rental community in Ocala, Florida, would play in a field next to her duplex. Apparently, her complaints started coming almost as soon as she moved into the house, which was after most of the families who lived in the area moved into their own homes.

Gandbhir establishes a frustratingly obvious pattern with this footage, which shows assorted Sheriff's deputies—sometimes the same ones over the course of about a year—talking to Lorincz, Owens, and other parents and neighbors in the community. There is some degree of uncertainty here, in that some of kids do seem to be on the property Lorincz rents from time to time, but the film puts that in a context that's impossible to ignore.

From the start, we know that this extended debate between an isolated woman, who's clearly antagonizing the kids and also lying about a lot of things, and everyone else in the neighborhood will result in the former shooting one of her neighbors. Considering that all of her anger and hatred were aimed at these children, we can at least take the smallest bit of comfort in the fact that Lorincz didn't shoot one of them. According to some of the kids, she threatened to, and when she did fire that fatal shot, Lorincz easily could have shot a child.

The point is that the entire argument of the first half or so of the film feels even more trivial and petty within the context of what we know will happen. Why does a person become so obsessed with such things? How could someone come to believe that any kind of violence, especially with a firearm, is any reasonable response to such an innocuous situation?

Wisely, Gandbhir doesn't necessarily want the answers to those or similar questions, because to do so might be to rationalize or even justify Lorincz's actions in some way—or, at least, be perceived as possibly doing so. She had her chances to be rational, to be upfront with those around her, to be honest about her thoughts and feelings, and to try to resolve whatever disagreements she might have in a sensible way—to actually be that "perfect neighbor" she tells the cops she sees herself as being. At every turn in these bodycam videos, we watch Lorincz make the wrong choice—a dishonest, overblown, selfish, and/or irrational one.

Knowing what will happen, this process and this pattern become increasingly terrifying. Everyone else is so reasonable here. The parents, whose children have been accused of trespassing on the property Lorincz is renting, laugh off the accusations in the early videos. Their solitary neighbor has made it abundantly clear that she doesn't want kids on the little stretch of lawn that would be her property, having her landlord put up warning signs along that small patch of grass. The parents have told their children as much, and the yard where they usually do play football or tag or just hang out belongs to an older man who's happy to let kids be kids.

Even the cops can see right through these complaints. They're annoyed that Lorincz keeps calling for the same reason they told her either wasn't an issue or wasn't in their power to do anything about, since she's the only person who thinks there's something that needs to be done about it. Besides, the children and their parents explain that their secluded neighbor only comes out to yell at the kids, insult them, and call them names.

One night, a pair of deputies arrive at Lorincz's house for an unrelated matter—having to do with her actually disrespecting someone else's property, breaking the law, and blatantly lying about the situation, by the way. The absolute rage in her voice at the sound of someone knocking at her door is frightening to hear, and even the cop who knocks is taken aback by it.

The scariest thing about watching this bodycam footage, with a few months passing in between each incident, is that nothing about this ongoing dispute escalates in an obvious way. Lorincz and her behavior are what they are from the very first call. There's almost no way to determine that she will ultimately act as she does, and even after shooting her neighbor through a multiply-locked door, Lorincz's call to emergency services is chillingly predictable. After sounding upset about shooting someone, she immediately starts her long, boring, and routine list of insignificant complaints. The cold tone of her voice in that moment is genuinely unsettling.

The second section of the film might be more infuriating, watching as another potential tragedy of a legal kind unfolds. Smartly, Gandbhir doesn't offer some broad attack on "stand-your-ground" laws, because the footage itself, both of more bodycam videos and ones of Lorincz being questioned on a couple of occasions, does all the work necessary to make a firm case against such legislation. Here is that law being abused, right in front of us to witness, and apart from the fact that Lorincz is who she is and behaves with such irrationality in all of her doings, there is a very distinct possibility that her "defense" could work.

How many people have gotten away with something like this? What kind of mentality breeds such hatred and distrust and self-entitlement that violence is a solution to frivolous things? How many lives and families like Owens' have been destroyed by this deadly combination? The Perfect Neighbor doesn't have answers, but it demands that we start asking these and many more questions.

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