Netflix’s newest true-crime documentary, The Good Neighbor, isn’t a simple watch and possibly it shouldn’t be. Directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Geeta Gandbhir, the movie unpacks the 2023 killing of Ajike “AJ” Owens, a 35-year-old Black mom of 4, by her white neighbor, Susan Lorincz, in Ocala, Florida. The tragedy and the circumstances surrounding it have left audiences not simply heartbroken, however livid. And after watching the movie, it’s clear that fury isn’t solely justified, it’s crucial.
On the coronary heart of The Good Neighbor lies a devastating story that feels all too acquainted. Owens’ kids have been merely enjoying of their neighborhood one thing any little one needs to be free to do when Lorincz started a sample of harassment that included racial slurs, repeated 911 calls, and confrontations that escalated over time. On June 2, 2023, that harassment turned deadly. Lorincz shot Owens by her locked entrance door, later claiming self-defense underneath Florida’s “Stand Your Floor” and “Citadel Doctrine” legal guidelines.
Gandbhir’s documentary stitches collectively police body-cam footage, 911 calls, and residential safety movies to disclose a chilling, slow-motion portrait of how bizarre racism, worry, and inaction can metastasize into tragedy. The viewer is pressured to confront the bureaucratic indifference and neighborhood silence that allowed this example to fester the repeated calls to police that resulted in no significant intervention, the neighbors who stayed silent, and the legal guidelines that appear written to excuse violence when the shooter is white and the sufferer is Black.
Watching The Good Neighbor, one can’t assist however really feel a sinking familiarity a way that we’ve seen this earlier than, too many instances earlier than.
The title of the movie itself looks like a merciless joke. Lorincz reportedly seen herself because the “excellent neighbor” somebody who regarded out for the protection and order of her neighborhood. However Gandbhir’s movie turns that phrase inside out, displaying as an alternative a girl whose paranoia and prejudice remodeled her into the neighbor from hell.
For a lot of viewers, that irony hits too near house. On social media, numerous Black viewers have expressed anger and exhaustion not simply over Owens’ demise, however over the sample it represents. The concept of “excellent” turns into a mirrored image of who society deems worthy of safety. In a neighborhood dispute, whose worry counts? Whose life issues extra? The reply stays as uncomfortable as ever.
The documentary doesn’t shrink back from the authorized backdrop: Florida’s “Stand Your Floor” and “Citadel Doctrine” legal guidelines, which permit householders to make use of lethal drive in the event that they “moderately” consider they’re in peril. The movie exposes how these legal guidelines designed to guard can as an alternative justify killing when racial bias fuels the notion of risk.
Critics have rightly identified that The Good Neighbor “crystallizes the horrors” of those legal guidelines, displaying how they permit violence reasonably than forestall it. Owens’s household and neighborhood had been calling for assist lengthy earlier than the taking pictures. Police had responded to repeated incidents between the 2 girls. But the escalation continued till Owens was gone.
That failure is what makes viewers livid. Owens didn’t simply die due to one individual’s hate she died as a result of a system constructed to “preserve the peace” refused to see the warning indicators.
In contrast to many true-crime documentaries that depend on interviews or reenactments, The Good Neighbor makes use of nearly solely uncooked footage body-cam video, police audio, and neighborhood surveillance. That alternative makes the story inconceivable to look away from. We see the youngsters’s worry. We hear the tone of officers who arrive too late. We witness the emotional aftermath as Owens’s household learns she’s gone.
For viewers, it’s nearly insufferable. That unfiltered realism strips away any distance between the viewers and the tragedy. There’s no comfy ethical buffer right here, no narrator to melt the blow. It’s simply what occurred and the way it may occur once more.
When viewers say they’re “livid,” it’s not nearly Lorincz’s actions it’s about every little thing that allowed them. It’s about how simply techniques fail when the sufferer is a Black lady, how readily the media normalizes her demise, and the way usually we’ve seen justice arrive too late to matter.
The fury can also be protecting it’s grief turned outward. It’s the collective recognition that Ajike Owens deserved higher, her kids deserved security, and her neighborhood deserved accountability.
As one viewer wrote on Threads, “The Good Neighbor is infuriating.”
It most actually is.
The Good Neighbor is a requirement for deeper reflection, for authorized reform, for empathy, and for vigilance. It asks viewers to cease pretending that these acts are remoted incidents. They’re not. They’re woven into the material of American life and right into a justice system that too usually excuses white worry whereas punishing Black existence.
Ultimately, The Good Neighbor forces us to look within the mirror and ask the toughest query of all: what number of “excellent neighbors” are nonetheless on the market, unchallenged, unexamined, unchecked till the following tragedy makes headlines?
As a result of if we will’t reply that truthfully, then we’re not simply watching the story. We’re residing it.
The Good Neighbor is presently streaming on Netflix.
