Love thy neighbor- an old maxim that was used to bind people together. But what happens when the fences meant to create boundaries grow so tall they breed something far darker—hatred?  In a quiet Florida suburb, petty complaints and late-night 911 calls spiral into a moment of irreversible violence. The Perfect Neighbor, Netflix’s new true-crime documentary, examines how fear and resentment can turn ordinary people into cautionary tales — and how a seemingly peaceful neighborhood conceals a slow-burning tragedy beneath its manicured lawns.

Even with critical praise, bringing this story to light was no simple feat for the docuseries’ team as producer Alisa Payne recently shared. 

In June 2023, social justice activist Takema Robinson reached out to her relative Nikon Kwantu and filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir after the tragic killing of family friend Ajike “AJ” Owens in Ocala, Florida. Owens, a devoted mother of four, was fatally shot by her neighbor, Susan Lorincz, following a petty dispute over children playing outside. Joined by producer Alisa Payne, the team traveled to Florida to support the grieving family and seek justice, as Lorincz was initially not arrested for the crime. Looking at the severity of the crime, Payne shared with Netflix Tudum, “The Perfect Neighbor is one of those films that we say we wish that we didn’t have to make.” 

For Payne and her collaborators, the challenge lay in balancing empathy with truth, as reported by Tudum. Directed by Geeta Gandbhir and produced alongside Nikon Kwantu and Sam Bisbee, The Perfect Neighbor captures the unraveling of a once-close Florida community through hours of police body-cam footage. Every frame feels hauntingly intimate, revealing how everyday tensions and unspoken biases can corrode trust. Rather than dramatizing tragedy, the film pieces together reality, raw, procedural, and painfully human.

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From heartbreak to hard evidence, The Perfect Neighbor unfolds not just as a film, but as an unflinching chronicle of a community’s collapse.

Told almost entirely through police body-camera footage, The Perfect Neighbor reconstructs how a once-harmonious Florida neighborhood unraveled. Through hours of real footage obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, it captures the alarming shift from neighborly coexistence to hostility, exposing how bias and fear metastasize behind suburban fences. The filmmakers gained rare trust from Pamela Dias, the mother of victim Ajike “AJ” Owens, whose death anchors the story. Her recollections, paired with 911 audio and on-scene footage, turn Owens from a statistic into a presence, warm, protective, and enduring. 

Susan Lorincz was eventually convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 25 years of the arrest, as seen at the end of the film. Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, where Geeta Gandbhir earned the US Documentary Directing Award, the film has already struck a powerful chord. By tracing how a minor conflict over children playing outdoors ended in tragedy, The Perfect Neighbor becomes more than a true-crime chronicle; it is a mirror to systemic prejudice, gun laws like stand your ground, and the fragility of community itself.

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