‘The Perfect Neighbor’ (2025) Netflix Review - Truth at Arm’s Length

I came into The Perfect Neighbor expecting a gripping true-crime doc, and in many ways it delivers something even more unsettling: a cold, unfiltered chronicling of how ordinary grievance, magnified by fear, law, and racism, can become lethal. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t let you settle comfortably on your couch; you shift, you squirm, you question. At its best, it feels urgent, intelligent, and morally alive. But at its worst, it leans so hard into archival footage that you sometimes feel less guided and more overwhelmed by raw material.

From the opening moments when you hear frantic 911 calls and see police bodycam video before much context is given, the film sets a tone of immediacy. You sense very early that you’re not watching reconstruction: you’re watching recorded reality. Over its roughly 97-minute runtime, director Geeta Gandbhir stitches together dozens of police visits, citizen complaints, 911 tapes, interrogation rooms, and neighbor interviews. You see the trajectory: Susan Lorincz calls the police on children playing, complains repeatedly, films them, accuses them of trespassing, grows suspicious, and escalates. On the other side, the Owens family, Ajike “AJ” Owens, a Black single mother of four, becomes entangled in her complaints as their children play, as conflicts over skates or a broken tablet or lawn space surface, as tensions simmer. The moments that look minor in isolation — a call to 911, a neighbor’s complaint — accumulate into something monstrous. Then, in June 2023, AJ goes to Lorincz’s door. Lorincz fires through that locked door, and AJ dies. The film then lets you see the aftermath: police response, the slow justice process, interviews with neighbors, and how the law treats the shooter and the victim differently.

Watching that unfold is potent, and the film’s strength lies especially in how it resists narrator overreach. Gandbhir rarely interrupts with moral commentary. Instead, she lets the footage speak. You see Lorincz claiming fear; you see her referencing the “stand your ground” law; you see police treating her politely; you see the anguish of AJ’s family. The editing is sharp: time is compressed, disparate scenes are cut to one another to let patterns emerge (complaints, police visits, community distress). It feels like a narrative constructed from evidence without a heavy hand telling you what to think. That restraint is admirable. Too many true crime docs lean toward melodrama or grandstanding; this one mostly stays grounded, which makes the moments of horror more chilling.

Performance is a weird word in a film like this, because it’s mostly unacted. But in its human dimension, it is powerful. You see AJ’s presence through testimony from friends, family, and the children; you see a dignified, caring mother whose life is cut short. You see Lorincz not as a cartoon villain, but as a bitter, resentful, determined figure. You even see ambiguity: in the interrogation room, you watch her skin tighten, her defenses, moments of possible rationalization. These are real people, and the film is careful not to flatten AJ into a martyr or Lorincz into a monster without context. It gives space for moral complexity while still making clear where responsibility lies.

Cinematography and sound are less flashy here — they don’t need to be. The power comes from the archival footage and the clarity of editing (Viridiana Lieberman’s work deserves praise). The ambient moments, a quiet street, a neighbor’s porch, the hush before a police arrival, are handled simply but effectively, allowing tension to build without artificial jostling. The sound mix is clean: you hear radio chatter, 911 dispatchers, muffled shouts, and silence. Nothing is overcoded. That minimalism strengthens the argument. The film trusts your intellect and your moral sense.

Still — and this is where I felt the 30 percent of my unease — there are times the documentary becomes sparse to a fault. Occasionally, I felt I wanted more connective tissue: more interviews with neutral neighborhood witnesses, more context about Ocala, more framing of how stand-your-ground laws have been applied elsewhere. Some relevant subplots (for example, whether earlier police intervention might have prevented tragedy) are touched on but not fully developed. Because so much depends on bodycam and official records, when footage is missing or gaps exist, the film sometimes lapses into silence, and the silence can feel hollow or unhelpful.

There were moments I thought: Is this emotionally distant? That distance is a double-edged sword. On one side, it prevents sensational exploitation — it doesn’t dramatize unnecessarily. On the other hand, when you're watching a grieving child or a parent giving testimony, I sometimes wish for more warmth, a more connective voice to guide emotional resonance. The film is so concerned with avoiding judgment that it sometimes skirts empathy. You feel AJ’s loss, but you also feel a barrier between you and full immersion in her life beyond the tragedy.

Another quibble: the clarity of the timeline can be fuzzy. The editing does flash back and forward, but on occasion, I had to pause and ask, “Wait — when did this happen relative to that? Was that before she fired on the door or after?” A few sequences blur into each other, and unless you're paying close attention, you may lose track of which complaint preceded another, or when police responded. That’s a small but nagging issue in a film that relies so heavily on cause and effect.

Also, the film’s relative lack of external voices, law scholars, civil rights attorneys, and historians sometimes leaves you wanting a bigger frame. Yes, the story is compelling enough on its own, but when tensions around race, power, and gun law hover so visibly, a little more distance from experts would help you see the forest. The film hints at systemic problems, but occasionally you feel like you’re seeing the heat of the fire but not the broader climate that allowed it.

Still, despite those flaws, The Perfect Neighbor is a compelling, unsettling piece of cinema. It reminds you that how neighbors behave can carry weight, that complaining, if left unchecked, can mutate into violence. It forces you to confront how laws meant to protect “home” can be twisted into justification for lethal force, particularly against marginalized communities. It asks: at what point does fear become a weapon, and who is allowed to claim self-defense?

By the end, I left with a knot in my stomach. That knot is a good thing. A film like this shouldn’t leave you comfortable. It should linger. It should make you talk. And it should make you question whether “justice” ever truly arrives. If your definition of a good documentary includes intellectual rigor, moral challenge, and emotional restraint (rather than manipulation), this one nails much of it, while occasionally faltering in connective depth and emotional warmth. But the honesty, the bravery of letting real voices speak, and the clarity of seeing how small actions accumulate into tragedy make it a must-watch.

Final Score- [7/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
Follow @AnjaliS54769166 on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times