Joey Magidson
Without getting on a political soapbox, I think the absolute fairest description of Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws that I can give is that it has had numerous unintended and tragic consequences. One such example is depicted in The Perfect Neighbor, one of the documentaries playing at the 2025 New York Film Festival. Anytime a shooting happens that captures our attention, we often put ourselves in one or both positions. Watching this doc, you’ll find yourself not taking both sides, but wondering just how we’ve gotten to this point in our nation. Are we as broken as it seems? The answer, unfortunately, might be yes.
The Perfect Neighbor is as much a social experiment as a crime doc, as it operates outside the sometimes trashy parameters of that realm. In examining a tragic crime, it does so by almost exclusively using police body-cam footage, which makes things almost resemble a found footage horror flick at times. It limits some of the broader aspects that a film like this normally would have, but it certainly winds up being memorable and unique.
The documentary centers on a killing in June of 2023. What seems like a regular old street in Marion County, Florida, ends up being the seen of a suburban tragedy. A white woman named Susan Lorincz fires a handgun through her front door, killing her neighbor, a black woman named Ajike Owens Lorincz claimed that she felt that her life was in danger, defending herself against the mother of four and using the state’s Stand Your Ground law to justify her actions. Of course, it’s not as simple as that, as we learn that there had been brewing tensions for months between Lorincz and her neighbors, all with a racial undertone. Of course, knowing how this tends to go, justice is far from assured and even less simple than the open and shut case that it should be.
Director Geeta Gandbhir uses the body-cam footage to weave a narrative that doesn’t give you quite as much detail as you’d like, but somehow gives you more than the style would suggest. The editing here is top notch, as Gandbhir herself never seems constrained or restricted by the footage. Instead, it seems to drive her, hoping we’re as upset by what we’re watching as she clearly is. At times, it even seems more like a thriller than a documentary, which is certainly a feather in the movie’s cap.
The Perfect Neighbor is the type of doc that won’t be for everyone, even though it being on Netflix will allow it to be seen by more than usual, but it’s also the type of work that may well inspire change. At the very least, some renewed outrage at Stand Your Ground is warranted. If someone like Susan Lorincz can hide her prejudice behind a law like this, we’re going to have more tragedies and more victims like Ajike Owens. Playing at NYFF, you won’t be able to shake this one, as it’s deeply upsetting, and obviously all too real.
SCORE: ★★★
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