‘The Perfect Neighbor’ Review: A Devastating Doc Observes the Chilling Consequences of Stand-Your-Ground Laws
There’s a scene in Geeta Gandbhir’s harrowing documentary The Perfect Neighbor, in which a Marion County police officer asks Susan Lorincz, a white Floridian, if she has ever called her Black neighbor’s children “the n-word.” Lorincz seems confused by the question and immediately denies it. But she eventually concedes, acknowledging that maybe the word had “slipped out.” She claims she was taught to use the word when referring to people who were being “unlawful, dirty and generally unpleasant.”
That moment is instructive for a couple of reasons: It reveals how Lorincz, one of the principal subjects of Gandbhir’s documentary, thinks; and it clarifies why Stand Your Ground laws are dangerous in a country plagued by racism.
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The earliest version of this legislation, which allows a citizen to use force (even lethal) if they perceive the threat of harm, was passed in Utah in 1994. Florida followed suit 11 years later, and since then upwards of 30 states have approved these self-defense ordinances. The laws have come repeatedly come under intense scrutiny, particularly after national tragedies: George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin in 2012, claimed self-defense and so did William Bryan and Travis and Greg McMichael, who chased and murdered Ahmaud Arbery in 2020. But despite evidence that these policies, often backed by the National Rifle Association, lead to an increase in racist violence, they are still legal.
Premiering at Sundance, The Perfect Neighbor takes an intimate approach to understanding the consequences of Stand Your Ground laws through one story that recently made headlines. In June 2023, Lorincz fired a single shot at her Black neighbor Ajike Owens, a mother of four, while she was knocking on her front door. In testimony taken by police officers later, the older, reclusive white woman claimed she feared for her life. Relying almost exclusively on police body camera footage, Gandbhir reconstructs a timeline of the events that led to that summer day. She observes this quiet community in Ocala, Florida, and shapes an affecting narrative about a festering feud with troubling turns. The film, which counts Sam Pollard and Soledad O’Brien among its executive producers, is a propulsive and often nauseating account of racist paranoia, police inertia and the consequences of America’s self-defense legislation.
The Perfect Neighbor opens in chaos, with police cruisers and ambulances racing to answer an unnerving 911 call. The voices on the other line repeat variations of “That lady shot her.” When police pull up to the cul-de-sac, where identical one-story homes sit, they come upon people frantically waving them down. The coarse quality of the footage augments the air of fear and desperation. Audio interviews, played over images of this seemingly idyllic suburban neighborhood, follow.
The first time Lorincz reported Owens to the Marion County police was in 2022. She claimed that her neighbor hit her with a plastic “No Trespassing” sign she kept in front of her property. In the footage, we see dispatched police tend to the scene, interviewing Lorincz, Owens and a few other neighbors. Bystanders deny Lorincz’s claim that Owens threw a sign. They tell officers that this woman, relatively new to the neighborhood, is the antagonist. She threatens kids for riding their bikes or playing football too close to her property. She accuses them of being loud, of trying to steal her truck, of coming after her.
The police quickly realize that Lorincz might be the issue. She keeps reporting incidents of aggression without evidence. Each time an officer visits the neighborhood, they employ the same tactics: They tell Lorincz that kids will be kids, they ask the children to be mindful of the elder woman’s property line (despite the fact that these homes are all rentals) and they warn the adults to use caution when negotiating with their agitated neighbor. A portrait of an unstable woman begins to emerge, but there appears to be no thought given to a sustainable solution. The feud percolates and the atmosphere in the community, once characterized by a protective unity, turns hostile.
In her last film Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, Gandbhir used archival footage and standard interviews to build a rousing but straightforward portrait of self-determination in a violently segregated area in Alabama. Here, the director takes a subtler approach to storytelling, allowing the metaphors and themes within the narrative to reveal themselves. The use of police body cam footage is striking and lends the doc a true-crime-style dynamism. It’s worth noting that officers control when they turn on these devices, a fact that inspires questions about potentially unrecorded moments. Still, it’s useful to hear how law enforcement treat Lorincz, especially as it becomes clearer that her meek disposition amounts to little more than a performance. The cops never see her as a threat, and their attitude — gentle pleading, dismissal — underscores how differently white people are treated by the law.
As evidence mounts, The Perfect Neighbor steadily and deftly builds momentum until its crushing apogee. The film wanes slightly in its third act when Gandbhir broadens her scope to consider the aftermath of the fatal June evening. It’s a tricky transition: The director replaces grainy body cam footage with sharper, more polished images observing Owens’ funeral and her community’s attempt to seek Lorincz’s arrest. There’s a devastating familiarity to these moments, which include cameos from civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton, but they are, by their very nature, less intense than the previous scenes.
Indeed, the most affecting parts of The Perfect Neighbor have little to do with Lorincz or the Marion County police’s lack of imagination in dealing with her. The moments that move involve Owens, her children and how members of their community react to news of her death. The police footage underlines their pain and reinforces just how deeply they were failed. What does justice look like for kids who will never see their mother again and who carry an unfair burden of guilt for her death? Who pays the price for a white person’s fear? By implicitly posing these questions, Gandbhir’s doc becomes a potent indictment of both these laws and a nation that upholds them.
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