The makers of The Perfect Neighbor, which is largely composed of police bodycam and dashcam footage, decided that it was necessary to include a recording of a bereft father informing three small children that their mother had died. Of course, the material is wrenching, but it is also intrusive and ultimately exploitative. The fact that this footage exists in the first place is entirely attributable to the fact that officers from the county sheriff’s office were on the scene. Those officers were on the scene in part because they were answering a call about a shooting, that of Ajike Owens, by her neighbor Susan Lorincz. But officers were en route to the scene already, because Lorincz has called 911 to complain about Owens, as she had done many times before.
You see, Lorincz was, and most likely still is, a racist. She lived in an Ocala, Florida, neighborhood that, like many neighborhoods, was also home to Black people, like Owens and her family. As we learn from testimony presented in The Perfect Neighbor, Lorincz was not the only white person in the neighborhood, but she was the only one obsessed with monitoring and policing the movements of her Black neighbors, particularly the local children who, like children in many other neighborhoods, liked to play outside. The crime in question took place in June, when the kids were home for the summer, so they were of course more present than they would otherwise have been. Much of what we see and hear in The Perfect Neighbor — which, again, is almost entirely composed of footage recorded by police — exists only because of Lorincz’s never-ending, fundamentally baseless calls to 911 and the Marion County Sheriff’s Office.
So already there is an irony built into The Perfect Neighbor. Lorincz, who the local kids called “the Karen” prior to her murder of Owens, is a violent narcissist, someone who insists that she and her needs must serve as the center of all reality. Narcissism is by no means exclusive to white people, but only white people can reasonably believe (so much so that it becomes a tacit assumption, rarely stated or reflected upon) that the power of the state is in place to enforce the centrality of white prerogative. One of the things that is most notable about The Perfect Neighbor is that we see very clearly that the officers know that Lorincz is the problem, and although their remarks dance around the edges of the subject, they clearly understand that Lorincz is driven by racism. (This becomes explicit when Lorincz admits to calling the neighbor kids the n-word, “because I was taught that that means you’re dirty.” It is also reported that she scolded the kids for coming near her yard, saying, “this isn’t the Underground Railroad.”)
The Perfect Neighbor is composed of footage that exists because a white woman mobilized the power of the state to do irrational, baseless things, knowing full well that she could do it. The fact that this film depicts the police sympathetically is notable, but it is also telling in its pointlessness. The officers, like Lorincz’s neighbors, understood that she was an unhinged racist, and that she was escalating a civil disturbance that would most likely end in tragedy. But no one — not the officers, and certainly not Lorincz’s neighbors — was in any position to stop her. That’s because, sympathetic and even racially sensitive though the police may have been, they were instruments of white supremacy. Their best intentions could not change this.
And so, director Geeta Gandbhir shows us a weeping father trying to choke back tears and tell his children “your mother is never coming back.” We observe one of his sons crying, and later on feeling guilt that if he hadn’t left his iPad over by Lorincz’s house, his mother would still be alive. (This is, of course, not true. Lorincz was determined for the situation to have a violent outcome. And as Rev. Al Sharpton stated eloquently in his eulogy for Owens, she died while standing up for her children, their safety, and their dignity. She died bravely, making a conscious choice to face down a racist bully.)
It is impossible to watch the scene of the father and his children learning of Owens’ death and not be shattered by it. However, there is also no reason whatsoever for this scene to be in the film. The viewer, and certainly the filmmakers, have no moral right to intrude on this tragedy. And even if Owens’ family gave Gandbhir permission to use the scene, which surely they must have, that does not justify its presence in The Perfect Neighbor. As stated above, this footage should not exist, and does only because of Lorincz’s deft manipulation of the state’s power to police Black bodies.
Why does The Perfect Neighbor think the viewer needs to intrude on this moment? Why do the film’s makers believe that we need to experience the moment when three children (the fourth was a toddler, still in the house) learn that their mother is dead? Is it because they think that we require anthropological evidence that this Black family is indeed composed of human beings, and that like Lorincz, we need to be educated about this fact? Or is the scene in the film for more prosaic narrative reasons, in order to provide a heightened affective contrast for when we see Lorincz being questioned by detectives, performing as a trauma victim when they are present but rolling her eyes in irritation when they leave? Do we need to be convinced that Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which provides extreme legal leeway for those claiming to kill in self-defense, is being used by racists to justify racist murder, as the law was no doubt designed to be used?
The kids in the neighborhood called Lorincz a “Karen,” and to its credit, The Perfect Neighbor reverses the usual terms of racial stereotyping in the U.S. It shows the Owens family as a group of unique individuals who were victimized by a person who is shown to be all too typical, someone for whom racism is a core element of their identity. But where other true-crime stories on Netflix and elsewhere tend to focus on the psychology of the killer, The Perfect Neighbor works overtime to humanize the victims, as if the viewer would never perceive them as human otherwise.
And this is the crux of my deep ambivalence toward this documentary. In essence, it addresses the viewer as a white racist, who needs to be shown in no uncertain terms that racism is wrong, and that Black children will indeed mourn the death of their mother, just like “you” would. That the Owens family’s profound grief was turned into a spectacle, presumably for its educational value, is revolting. And yet, someone like Lorincz (and there are many of them) need to have it impressed upon them that yes, Black people are human beings. And yet, someone like Donald Trump repeatedly uses the power of the presidency to mock any Black person who does not kowtow to him as a “low IQ” individual, explicitly calling on the long, horrible history of racist eugenics. And yet, Zionist extremists move into the occupied territories of Gaza because they, like Lorincz, enter into an existing community with the intent to dehumanize those who live there.
The footage of the Owens children learning of their mother’s death should not exist. It should not appear in The Perfect Neighbor. But, its makers could reasonably retort, Susan Lorincz should not have killed Ajike Owens, and the Susan Lorinczes of the world, and they are plentiful, need to understand the consequences of their actions. And so we must ask: do we honestly expect them to care?
DIRECTOR: Geeta Gandbhir; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; IN THEATERS: October 10; STREAMING: October 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 37 min.
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