Released: 17th October
Seen: 4th November
On June 2nd 2023, Police were called to a street in Ocala, Florida to respond to an alleged disturbance call. Susan Louise Lorincz called them to report that a couple of kids were being loud near her house and creating a nuisance, a call she had made multiple times in the past for all kinds of issues that largely revolved around those kids just playing in the street or in the open field near her house (a field she did not have any ownership of). Susan was informed that police were on their way… 2 minutes after she hung up, Susan would be calling the police back to inform them that she had just shot her neighbour, Ajike Owens, who was the mother of one of the children that Susan regularly had run-ins with. Ajike would not survive the shooting and the circumstances that led to this horrific event are the subject of the documentary The Perfect Neighbor
The Perfect Neighbor uses almost entirely police camera footage to lay out the history of Susan’s issues with pretty much everyone who lived in her street. Over the course of several visits from local law enforcement, we witness how Susan seems to be unable to handle the idea of kids being kids who like to run around and play football or other games. With minimal seemingly edited out, we join the officers for every major interaction, witness how each time seems to be for pettier and pettier things and how even the cops seem to think some of these calls are truly inane. Slowly, the longer the interactions go on, the more the uncomfortable subtext comes to the forefront and what started as a look into a horrible incident between neighbours slowly turns into a discussion about how stand your ground laws have allowed racists to murder with impunity.
The choice to tell the story of The Perfect Neighbor using nothing but police footage is a fascinating one, allowing us to have a unique and consistent perspective on the events as they unfold. A lack of talking head interviews or scripted moments forces us to live in the reality of the situation in all its uncomfortable glory, seeing the chaos that fills the small street where Susan became known as a Karen to everyone around her. It gives a rare glimpse into how everyone knew that what Susan was doing was overreacting, even the police who can be caught calling her a psycho as they leave the scene and yet no one could see where this was all going. The realism of how everything is presented gives the film a real tension that builds with every new trip by the police to the street, knowing from the start that one of them was going to end with someone being shot, but never knowing how many of them we’d see before the fateful moment.
The big point of The Perfect Neighbor is about how “stand your ground” laws seem to be used by racists a lot to get away with things that they really shouldn’t be able to (*cough* George Zimmerman *cough) and it plays that idea brilliantly. For the majority of the film, the idea of “Stand your ground” being used by racists is subtext, the film doesn’t try to hide the reality that this is a largely black neighbourhood and that Susan is a white woman who doesn’t seem to be involved in the community. For a brief period of time, you can almost think it’s just kind of a coincidence… then the longer the film goes on, the more you learn and that subtext becomes pretty blunt text, even before the filmmakers just flat out put text on the screen to make their point clear. It really does a great job of showing how subtle and pervasive this issue can be, you could almost miss it on first glance when it is at the core of the whole issue.
What’s particularly surprising is how dramatic and tense the whole documentary is, even with it basically spoiling its own ending right at the start. The hard part about doing a true crime documentary like this is that the audience can quite easily just look up what happened on their own, the second I heard them say the name Susan Lorincz I was googling to find out what I was in for so it’s not going to shock you with the conclusion to the story but what it does better than any documentary I’ve seen about this kind of material is put you in the community where this happened. You can feel how this issue must’ve made everyone in that street feel on edge, you can feel the exasperation from the other adults who just want the kids to be able to have fun, you feel the annoyance and confusion of the kids about why they can’t just play without some lady who moved in 2 years ago making their lives hell and you feel the pain the night of the actual shooting.
The Perfect Neighbor is honestly a great test study in how to handle true crime stories, just presenting the facts as bluntly as possible without sensationalising them. Sure, there’s a point of view (one that really should be listened to because it’s kind of sad that this is still happening), but it’s about as honest as you could hope for it to be. To mildly alter a quote from Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, it’s biased as all fuck, but it tries to be fair. It lays out the facts, presents them in a truly unique and powerful way that keeps you paying attention and takes the audience on a heart-stopping roller coaster.
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