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

Cameras and surveillance have become an inescapable reality today. If we are not performing, then we are constantly being recorded by cameras everywhere. Geeta Gandbhir takes an unusual advantage of this fact in her 2025 Netflix documentary The Perfect Neighbor. Revisiting the 2023 killing of Ajike Owens, the Oscar-nominated documentary quite literally ends up borrowing the lens through which it explores the sequence of events.

Between August 2022 and June 2023, Susan Lorincz called the police to her Florida neighbourhood several times. Though each time, her complaint was the same: the disturbance created by the children playing near her house. A final altercation between her and a young boy’s mother (Owens) led to a fatal shooting on June 2, 2023, as Lorincz claimed to defend herself from behind closed doors. It left four children motherless, and a neighbourhood changed forever.

The Perfect Neighbor takes several stops along the way as it chronicles this growing tension. Gandbhir primarily relies on police bodycam footage to document the events. Splicing together footage recorded by the bodycams, as the police repeatedly respond to Lorincz’s calls, Gandbhir paints a striking picture of the community. The children and their parents refute Lorincz’s allegations, and instead level the blame on Lorincz’s racist behaviour.

Gandbhir’s decision to use bodycam footage justifies itself manifold in these interactions, as we see an almost docile and mild-natured Lorincz when she interacts with the police. When defending themselves, the children point to cameras situated at Lorincz’s house, but the documentary doesn’t switch to that footage. The other camera we view Lorincz is the one located at the police station, where she is being questioned. Lorincz keeps up her act there as well. The documentary documents Lorincz’s projection of herself in front of authorities. Meanwhile, her real nature is left to be judged by the lasting consequences of her actions.

The bodycam also captures Ajike Owens and her children. It shows Owens defending her children to the policemen, against Lorincz’s accusations. Owens’ children also appear in front of the bodycams, as they explain Lorincz’s racist tirades against them. But none of this prevents the inevitable, as Gandbhir’s documentary builds the tension towards a tragic end that the audience is already familiar with.

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The Perfect Neighbor sets the stage for what one would assume is a clinical dissection of events. Police bodycams, dashcams, CCTVs – multiple surveillance tools end up as storytellers. The audience is witness to an intimate portrayal of a community stitched together from administrative recordings. It also ends up serving as a documentation of the corrosive nature of lax gun laws and the enabling nature of Florida’s ‘Stand-your-ground’ law.

Gandbhir’s personal connection to the victim led her to document this story, but her nuanced approach successfully builds a wider and necessary interest.

The Perfect Neighbor is available for streaming on Netflix