It showed the moment Owens\u2019 children learned their mother would not be coming home. It showed Lorincz in a small interrogation room, admitting that she may have called her neighbours \u201cthe n-word\u201d. (She was taught the word \u201cmeant you were being unlawful, dirty \u2026 generally just not being pleasant\u201d, she explained.) It showed police repeatedly responding to Lorincz\u2019s 911 calls, disputes that began over families walking their dogs near her home or children playing too loudly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m peaceful. I\u2019m, like, the perfect neighbour,\u201d Lorincz tells them at one point. \u201cYou barely ever see me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Owens family had hoped Gandbhir and her partner, Nikon Kwantu, would be able to identify clips that could be shared with the media to help keep the story in the public eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not just something for the news,\u201d Gandbhir recalled Kwantu telling her. \u201cThere might be a bigger story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two years later, Gandbhir\u2019s documentary of the events that transpired in that community, The Perfect Neighbor, is stirring audiences. A winner at this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival, it was released on Netflix this month and quickly became the streaming platform\u2019s most-watched movie in the United States.<\/p>\n
Critics have praised the film as \u201csubversive\u201d and \u201cheart-pounding\u201d. On TikTok, where the movie and its subjects have been trending, viewers have called the movie a must-watch and posted passionate reactions to the film \u2013 some in tears, others simmering with anger. <\/p>\n
\u201cI never cried and got mad so much until I watched The Perfect Neighbor, one person said.<\/p>\n
The film deliberately avoids much of the formula \u2013 and potential pitfalls \u2013 that define the true-crime genre. There are no talking heads contextualising events for the viewer or representing the myriad sides involved. Because police body cameras are the lens through which most of the movie unfolds, the viewer often feels embedded within law enforcement, a passive witness to the drama unfolding on the street Owens and Lorincz shared.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really important to us to make sure that we showed a 360 of what happened on the ground,\u201d Gandbhir said in a video interview from her Brooklyn apartment the day before the film\u2019s Netflix release. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted, with this footage, for the audience to really be immersed \u2026 for it to play like a narrative and for them to be able to come to their own conclusions about what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drone footage depicting the quiet mundanities of the working-class suburb \u2013 trees shaking in the wind, a patchy lawn \u2013 interrupts the action from time to time. But these images are often tinged with dread. Frequently, they\u2019re accompanied by audio of detectives interviewing neighbours after the fatal shooting. Those testimonies are a \u201cchoir\u201d, Ghandbhir said, representing the community Lorincz took arms against.<\/p>\n
Ajike \u201cAJ\u201d Owens’ family gathers around a portrait of her during a memorial. Photo \/ Netflix<\/p>\n
Because Lorincz\u2019s calls are the reason the cops \u2013 and the cameras \u2013 enter the neighbourhood in the first place, she, not Owens, becomes the film\u2019s primary subject. The object of Lorincz\u2019s ire was the neighbourhood children, a racially diverse assembly of kids (including three of Owens\u2019 four children) who ride bikes together, play football and roller-skate under the watchful eye of various adults in the community.<\/p>\n
These are scenes that many Americans \u2013 including the cops answering Lorincz\u2019s 911 calls \u2013 may consider idyllic, even quaint. (In the documentary, a sheriff\u2019s deputy even tells the neighbourhood children, \u201cI\u2019d rather see you guys outside playing than on them TikToks.\u201d) But the kids, most of whom appear to be preteens and younger, are menacing and violent in Lorincz\u2019s eyes. She swears at them and calls them \u201cretards\u201d. She threatens to send a \u201ccease and desist\u201d order because the kids are playing too loudly in a yard that is not hers. The kids, in turn, refer to her as \u201cthe Karen\u201d \u2013 a 21st-century pejorative for an entitled White woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone down this whole block has yelled at this lady because of how she talks to kids,\u201d a female neighbour told the cops in December 2022. By spring 2023, one male neighbour grumbled that Lorincz was calling 911 \u201clike, twice a week\u201d.<\/p>\n
Even the police appear to grow increasingly exasperated with Lorincz; one refers to her as a \u201cpsycho\u201d after chatting with the children she had reported. Still, they answer Lorincz\u2019s calls with pat sympathy. They advise the kids not to bother her. They tell her to call again \u201cif there are any future problems\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gandbhir believes law enforcement \u201cdidn\u2019t see Susan as a threat\u201d. After Lorincz shot Owens, neighbours told detectives that Lorincz had recently escalated her harassment of the neighbourhood children, including brandishing a gun at them. Some even believed Lorincz had set Owens up to be killed.<\/p>\n
The aftermath of that shooting is the film\u2019s most devastating sequence, capturing some of Owens\u2019 last breaths as she lay on the ground outside Lorincz\u2019s home. The anguished yell of her children\u2019s father when an officer whispers in his ear that Owens has died. Her children reflexively trying to run away when he tells them, \u201cMum\u2019s not coming back anymore.\u201d Owens\u2019 mother screaming \u201cWhy?\u201d through the phone when she hears her daughter had died.<\/p>\n
On social media, viewers of the documentary have shared visceral responses to these scenes, with some posting pictures of their tear-streaked faces or videos of themselves wailing into their hands. But others expressed reservations, warning that such scenes amounted to \u201cBlack trauma porn\u201d.<\/p>\n
Gandbhir said film-makers questioned whether they should include that footage \u2013 and to what extent. Before making the film, Gandbhir asked Owens\u2019 mother, Pam Dias, for permission to tell the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven though she was in the midst of her grief, she was like, \u2018No, the world needs to know what happened to my baby,\u2019\u201d Gandbhir said. Dias didn\u2019t know how the film would turn out until Gandbhir sent her the cut they were planning to show at Sundance in January. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t change her stance,\u201d Gandbhir said. \u201cShe wants more to come out of this \u2026 she wants to turn her pain into purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of that purpose, Gandbhir said, is turning a critical eye to larger issues of gun and racial violence \u2013 concerns that seem to have ebbed out of the national consciousness in the past year, despite their impact on generations of Americans and their communities.<\/p>\n
Of particular interest to the film is Florida\u2019s \u201cstand your ground\u201d law \u2013 which Lorincz invoked after she shot Owens. It took days for Florida police to arrest her; investigators told media outlets at the time that they first needed to determine whether Lorincz met the criteria for the law when she shot Owens through a dead-bolted metal door.<\/p>\n
Lorincz tells investigators she will not go with them after learning she is being arrested for manslaughter. Photo \/ Netflix<\/p>\n
The scenes of Lorincz\u2019s interrogation are the most \u201ccinematic\u201d, in Gandbhir\u2019s view \u2013 and arguably the most revealing. At one point, when police inform Lorincz they are arresting her for manslaughter, she simply refuses to go with them. \u201cNo. I\u2019m not going. Sorry,\u201d she tells them in a back-and-forth that lasts more than three minutes. \u201cI don\u2019t care. Kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n
That scene shook many of the people responding to the film online. Some chalked it up to \u201cWhite privilege\u201d. (\u201cThe audacity!\u201d said one TikToker.) Others were astonished at how patient the police were with her.<\/p>\n
At screenings, \u201cpeople often laugh at that scene\u201d, Gandbhir said. \u201cI have to say, I do, too, because you can\u2019t believe the detectives can\u2019t get her out of the chair.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lorincz was ultimately convicted of manslaughter and sentenced in November 2024 to 25 years in prison. In a September interview from behind bars with a local TV station, Lorincz maintained that she feared for her life.<\/p>\n
Critics praising The Perfect Neighbor have noted that what unfolded between Lorincz and her surrounding community feels like a microcosm of a post-pandemic America: the mounting distrust and polarisation, the fear, the unchecked paranoia, the panopticon of surveillance footage, body cameras and personal devices capturing it all.<\/p>\n
But audiences have also lauded the families who lived in the neighbourhood: the adults who stood up for each other\u2019s children, who told police they look out for them \u201clike I look out for my own\u201d.<\/p>\n
On social media this week, one parent featured in the documentary said those families have since moved out of the neighbourhood. But in the documentary, \u201cWe were able to recreate this beautiful little community as they were living before,\u201d Gandbhir said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat, to me, is really part of the gift of this footage,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It showed the moment Owens\u2019 children learned their mother would not be coming home. It showed Lorincz in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17248,642,2986,17898,3936,4480,16719,19056,156,593,71,76609,76608,6036,9223,72857,1094,111,139,69,6270,29392,24996,19764,76611,8207,223,76610,76607,55227,6923,1316,6730],"class_list":["post-106153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-17248","tag-august","tag-county","tag-didnt","tag-director","tag-drive","tag-emotional","tag-encounter","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-from","tag-gandbhir","tag-geeta","tag-know","tag-marion","tag-neighbor","tag-netflix","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-office","tag-perfect","tag-reaction","tag-received","tag-sheriffs","tag-sparks","tag-the","tag-thumb","tag-truecrime","tag-viewer","tag-what","tag-when","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}