The Perfect Neighbor

I would never want to take away from the frustration the family or anyone involved with the family would have over a delay in the justice needed to prosecute Susan.

But I would like to comment on the level of compassion and community policing that was evident in the early part of the film. Particularly on the night of the incident.. I saw a comfort concern, compassion, and empathy.

In a time when we are not seeing law-enforcement behave in many circumstances very professionally, there were a number of moments in this film where they did. This occurred back in 2022 to 2023, since then we've seen a distinct change in behavior in some law-enforcement and law-enforcement agents, largely federalized.

I still believe community policing is a valuable and important initiative, I think there were good examples of that here.

Absolutely devastating but an essential watch if you can face opening your eyes to the sad state of today's humanity. Beautifully put together piece of the awful state of society. My heart goes out to anyone involved in this or anything even slightly similar. Shame on humans in today's world. I wish I could make some significant change to this awful world.

My stomach dropped. It was raw and gripping. This film was a well-constructed way of bringing this hard subject matter to light. The body-cam footage really helped show the timeline of the events and the responses as they happened. But it was the reactions of the immediate aftermath that hurt my heart. Truly wishing love and healing for the family.

It's completely baffling seeing people here try to defend a crazy old woman that murdered someone in cold blood over something so petty as a some noise. A completely derranged and disgusting human being that should have been behind bars (either in prison or in an asylum).

As if it was already difficult enough to have any hope left for humanity.

Susan Lorincz embodies a distinctly American pathology - the collision of fear, entitlement, and firearms. The Perfect Neighbor traces the fatal culmination of her persecutory delusions, a mind consumed by suspicion and grievance until fantasy hardened into bullet.

Lorincz's world is small, airless. Every sound from next door becomes an assault, every child's laugh a provocation. Her psyche folds in on itself, the fragile ego clutching its righteousness like a gun. Hers is a persecutory personality - the mind's desperate attempt to maintain control by projecting its own hostility outward. The "threat" she insists upon is internal, displaced into the bodies of others. Owens and her children were merely in the crosshairs of Lorincz's psychic disarray.

The film draws a quiet horror from this: the way paranoia metastasises in the banal spaces of suburbia, until a front door becomes a fortress and a neighbour a sworn enemy. Lorincz's delusions operate within a larger cultural permission structure - the white woman's fear of Black presence, laundered through law and "stand your ground" rhetoric. It's the paradox of American violence: the one who feels most endangered becomes the most dangerous.

Yet beneath the pathology and politics lies profound tragedy. Ajike Owens, a mother of four, is rendered here with grace and restraint - a woman whose ordinary attempts at justice and protection become her death sentence. Her story anchors the film's fury. Owens's absence fills the screen more than Lorincz's presence ever could; she is the moral centre that exposes the psychic collapse around her.

The Perfect Neighbor ultimately indicts not only one woman's paranoia, but a culture that arms its fears and defends its racism. Lorincz's mind, fractured and defended, is a symptom of a broader national disorder - where delusion finds validation, and a trigger becomes the final punctuation of grievance.