Netflix’s latest hit, The Perfect Neighbor, is an impactful film, and audiences can’t stop talking about it. The true-crime documentary, directed by Geeta Gandbhir, dives into the slaying of Ajike “AJ” Owens, a mother of four whose passing shocked a Florida community and ignited widespread conversations about race, fear, and justice.
Highlights
- The Perfect Neighbor has climbed to Netflix’s No. 1 spot and earned a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
- The documentary examines the slaying of Ajike “AJ” Owens through bodycam footage.
- Viewers have been left emotionally shattered and divided over its raw portrayal of tragedy.
The film, which premiered at Sundance 2025 before hitting Netflix on October 17, has achieved a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, but its impact can’t be measured by numbers alone. Viewers have described the film as an experience that is gut-wrenching and impossible to forget.
The Perfect Neighbor exposed the tragedy behind Ajike Owens’ slaying
Image credits: Netflix/Tudum
The Perfect Neighbor tells the story of Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old Black mother from Ocala, Florida, who was fatally s**t through her neighbor’s door in June 2023.
She was s**t by Susan Lorincz, a 58-year-old woman known for repeatedly calling the police on local children, including Owens’ own.
Image credits: Ajike Shantrell Owens/Facebook
Lorincz wasn’t arrested immediately. Under Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law, Lorincz claimed she was defending herself, according to TV Insider.
Five days later, authorities finally charged her with manslaughter with a firearm, culpable negligence, battery, and two counts of a**ault. She was convicted of manslaughter in 2024 and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Image credits: Netflix/Tudum
Judge Robert Hodges later said the shooting was “completely unnecessary,” emphasizing that Lorincz was safe behind a locked door when she chose to fire on AJ.
“She could have stayed in the room,” he said. “But she came back out, put herself in front of the door, and at the time she fired the gun through the door, she was safe.”
Image credits: Netflix/Tudum
Today, Lorincz is serving her sentence at Homestead Correctional Institution, still insisting she felt “terrified” by Owens and her children prior to the tragic incident.
In a 2025 interview, she said, “It just makes me sick. I just never, ever thought in a million years this would happen and it just … it breaks my heart. I can’t take it back. I can’t replace her.”
Image credits: Netflix
The harrowing film explored the aftermath of the slaying and the real people left behind
Geeta Gandbhir, the director of The Perfect Neighbor, told The Washington Post that she received a thumb drive about the case from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office in August 2023.
The thumb drive had over 30 hours of police bodycam and dashcam footage. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this footage goes back two years,’” the director said.
Image credits: MightyKeef
Some of the footage was very difficult to watch. Viewers highlighted the moment Owens’s children were told their mother wasn't coming home, and the raw grief that followed.
One scene showed Owens’s mother screaming “Why?” through the phone when she learned her daughter had passed away.
Image credits: VSammy3_
On social media, the reactions were immediate and emotional, according to PureWow Entertainment. “Watching The Perfect Neighbor on Netflix crying my eyes out,” one user wrote. “This broke me,” another commented, saying that the film was “tremendous... but not one I wish to ever revisit.”
Some praised Gandbhir for handling the story with care and integrity. Others felt conflicted, arguing that certain scenes bordered on “Black trauma p**n.”
Image credits: Florida Dept of Corrections
Gandbhir and her team wrestled with that same ethical question while editing the film, but according to the director, Owens’s mother wanted her daughter’s story to be told, even if it was difficult to watch.
“The world needs to know what happened to my baby,” Owens’s mom told Gandbhir.
Image credits: Ajike Shantrell Owens/Facebook
Netizens cannot get the harrowing scenes of The Perfect Neighbor out of their minds
Image credits: anovelwoman
Gandbhir noted that she and her co-director, Nikon Kwantu, made the film not just to recount events, but to expose the systemic failures that allowed them to happen.
“There might be a bigger story,” Kwantu told her, and there was.
Image credits: erikaxtc
The footage on the thumb drive revealed a pattern of 911 calls, escalating harassment, and the quiet terror that led up to Owens’s final moments.
Many viewers have taken to social media to share their outrage, heartbreak, and disbelief.
Image credits: Law&Crime Trials
“I think The Perfect Neighbor did a great job of shining a harsh light on a system where some people walk in with the benefit of the doubt, while others carry the weight of suspicion simply because their skin color walks in first,” one viewer stated on X.
Another wrote, “I haven’t felt such visceral and intensely gendered loathing for a documentary termagant since Dear Zachary,” one reviewer noted.
“As gripping as it is deeply unsettling, The Perfect Neighbor lays bare the systemic failures and the quiet terror embedded in American legal systems with surgical precision,” another stated.
Netizens shared their thoughts on The Perfect Neighbor on social media
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