Oscars 2026: ‘The Perfect Neighbor’ documentary review: An intimate retelling through clinical means

Cameras and surveillance person go an inescapable world today. If we are not performing, past we are perpetually being recorded by cameras everywhere. Geeta Gandbhir takes an antithetic vantage of this information successful her 2025 Netflix documentary The Perfect Neighbor. Revisiting the 2023 sidesplitting of Ajike Owens, the Oscar-nominated documentary rather virtually ends up borrowing the lens done which it explores the series of events.

Between August 2022 and June 2023, Susan Lorincz called the constabulary to her Florida neighbourhood respective times. Though each time, her ailment was the same: the disturbance created by the children playing adjacent her house. A last altercation betwixt her and a young boy’s parent (Owens) led to a fatal shooting connected June 2, 2023, arsenic Lorincz claimed to support herself from down closed doors. It near 4 children motherless, and a neighbourhood changed forever.

The Perfect Neighbor takes respective stops on the mode arsenic it chronicles this increasing tension. Gandbhir chiefly relies connected constabulary bodycam footage to papers the events. Splicing unneurotic footage recorded by the bodycams, arsenic the constabulary repeatedly respond to Lorincz’s calls, Gandbhir paints a striking representation of the community. The children and their parents refute Lorincz’s allegations, and alternatively level the blasted connected Lorincz’s racist behaviour.

Gandbhir’s determination to usage bodycam footage justifies itself manifold successful these interactions, arsenic we spot an astir docile and mild-natured Lorincz erstwhile she interacts with the police. When defending themselves, the children constituent to cameras situated astatine Lorincz’s house, but the documentary doesn’t power to that footage. The different camera we presumption Lorincz is the 1 located astatine the constabulary station, wherever she is being questioned. Lorincz keeps up her enactment determination arsenic well. The documentary documents Lorincz’s projection of herself successful beforehand of authorities. Meanwhile, her existent quality is near to beryllium judged by the lasting consequences of her actions.

The bodycam besides captures Ajike Owens and her children. It shows Owens defending her children to the policemen, against Lorincz’s accusations. Owens’ children besides look successful beforehand of the bodycams, arsenic they explicate Lorincz’s racist tirades against them. But nary of this prevents the inevitable, arsenic Gandbhir’s documentary builds the hostility towards a tragic extremity that the assemblage is already acquainted with.

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The Perfect Neighbor sets the signifier for what 1 would presume is simply a objective dissection of events. Police bodycams, dashcams, CCTVs – aggregate surveillance tools extremity up arsenic storytellers. The assemblage is witnesser to an intimate portrayal of a assemblage stitched unneurotic from administrative recordings. It besides ends up serving arsenic a documentation of the corrosive quality of lax weapon laws and the enabling quality of Florida’s ‘Stand-your-ground’ law.

Gandbhir’s idiosyncratic transportation to the unfortunate led her to papers this story, but her nuanced attack successfully builds a wider and indispensable interest.

The Perfect Neighbor is disposable for streaming connected Netflix