The Perfect Neighbors Netflix

I watched The Perfect Neighbors on Netflix the other night. 

Naturally, my mind wandered to Florida—America’s sun-drenched theatre of legal improvisation—where the Stand Your Ground law continues to blur the lines around self-defense. You see, in Florida, “reasonable fear” is a legal defence. 

P/s - stay tuned for my blog on this specific law, because when i'm not a fan, i don’t just critique it… i dissect it and satirize it. 😉

So the movie. 

You spend the whole runtime inside Lorincz's world: her routines, her anxieties, her carefully curated dread, the cops. The camera lingers just long enough to make you complicit in her perspective. You start to think, Well, maybe… maybe she was just scared. Maybe she really did feel threatened. Maybe the world had been closing in on her for so long that she snapped. 

Who wouldn’t feel their nerves fray with the endless racket of children, the daily dose of irritation, and casual disregard for boundaries? And really—at some point you start wondering: why on earth don’t these neighbours have private gates? Though, granted, that’s a whole separate saga.

And then—bam!—the judge delivers that line and that too at the very end:

Lorincz’s actions were "more due to anger than fear.”

Just like that, the scaffolding collapses. You’re left staring at the wreckage of your own assumptions. Was it fear? Was it rage? Was it both, braided so tightly you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began?

The brilliance—or cruelty—of the film is that it doesn’t tell you. It lets you stew in the ambiguity. 

The defense.

Lorincz had a story. She said she was scared. She called the police. She said she feared for her life. 

The jury.

Ain't buying it. It wasn’t fear. It was anger. It was bottled-up rage. And in their own quietly methodical way, the jury did what juries do best: they sniffed out the difference between panic and premeditation.

Now, juries these days—contrary to popular courtroom dramas—aren’t just twelve people who couldn’t dodge civic duty. They’re surprisingly sharp. They listen. They squint. And in Lorincz’s case, they applied what we might call sensible human logic. No law degree required. 

Let’s review their mental checklist:

• Closed, thick door: Not a screen door. Not a curtain. A solid barrier. Which means Ojike wasn’t inside. She wasn’t even visible. So the threat? More theoretical than immediate.
• Weapon retrieval and movement: Lorincz didn’t scream and fire in a flurry of adrenaline. She got the weapon, moved through the room, and fired. That’s not fear. That’s choreography.
• Police instructions: They told her to stay put. She didn’t. Which means she wasn’t just afraid—she was defiant. And defiance, as any jury knows, is fear’s older, angrier cousin.

Meanwhile, off to the side—me, the unofficial juror with popcorn and a pause button—I couldn’t help but wonder: if Lorincz’s fear was truly that intense—chronic, suffocating, a daily emotional fog—then why didn’t she just move?

It’s the kind of question that quietly unravels her story. Because real fear, the kind that keeps you up at night and makes you jump at the sound of footsteps, usually sends you running. It doesn’t make you linger by the door. It doesn’t make you reach for a weapon. It makes you pack, plan, and leave. Not prepare. Not escalate.

Anger vs Fear.

Now, my friends...let me tell you something, fear is a curious thing. It can make you do all sorts of things. That's what it did to Lorincz. It made her buy a weapon. It made her say things about people who don't look like her. It also made her insists that people stay off her lawn, her porch, her property, and her general line of sight.

But fear, when you wear it long enough, it starts to look like something else. Like anger. Or entitlement. Or a long-simmering belief that one day, you might just have to do something drastic—and when that day comes, you’ll be ready. 

The movie reminds us that fear can be a mask, and anger can wear pearls. That a woman who says she’s afraid might also be furious. And that the law, in all its solemn clarity, must draw a line—even if the human heart never does.

Truth vs Lie.

This is when the film stops being a story and starts being a mirror. At some point, you’re no longer just watching Lorincz. You’re interrogating her. You’re parsing her tone, her pauses, her posture. You’re asking yourself: Is she scared? Or is she rehearsed? And then you turn that same scrutiny on everyone else—the neighbors, the cops. You start playing judge and jury from your couch, toggling between empathy and suspicion like it’s a courtroom sport.

It’s not just about who’s lying. It’s about who’s performing truth well enough to be believed. And that’s the unsettling brilliance of it. The film doesn’t hand you a villain. It hands you a cast of flawed humans and says, You decide. And guess what, it's through real live cams. And quietly, it reminds you: truth isn’t always loud. Lies aren’t always obvious. And sometimes, the most dangerous thing isn’t who’s lying—it’s how easily we believe what we want to hear.

Tragic irony

If Lorincz had done even a cursory scroll through Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute—or, say, skimmed a pamphlet titled “How Not to Look Like You Meant It”—she might’ve realized that fear isn’t just a feeling. It’s a legal performance.

And Lorincz? She flubbed the audition.

She appeared defensive, which juries read as guilt.

She sounded resentful, which they read as motive.

She was inconsistent, which they read as fiction.

Lorincz’s problem wasn’t just what she did—it was how she looked while explaining it, in all those live cams. She didn’t tremble. She didn’t break. She looked like someone who’d been waiting for this moment—not dreading it.

So the jury, sharp as ever, didn’t buy the fear. They bought the anger. Not the kind that explodes, but the kind that simmers. The kind that plans. The kind that waits for the right moment and then says, “Now.”

The Tragedy

She didn’t seem to grasp—not fully, not viscerally—what she had done to that family. Not just the loss. Not just the grief. But the rupture. The kind that doesn’t heal with verdicts or apologies or time.

She perhaps rehearsed her own fear, her own story, her own defense. But what she didn’t rehearse—what she didn’t seem to see—was the children left motherless. She couldn't even write a sincere letter to them. And the moment is devastating. No script, no courtroom, no legal argument can prepare you for the rawness of a child saying, “My heart breaks.” And when the father tells them—gently, painfully—that their mother is gone. It’s the kind of scene that strips away all the legal framing and leaves you with the human cost.

Internal checklist

The Perfect Neighbors taught us something—something quietly unnerving and inconveniently true. 

That we all need a little internal checklist. Not for groceries. Not for taxes. But for our emotions.

Fear or anger? That’s the question.

Not “Do I feel something?” but “Is this something about survival… or control?”

Because here’s the thing: 

Fear wears a cardigan and locks the door. 

Anger kicks it down. 

Fear says, “I’m not sure.” 

Anger says, “I’ve had enough.” 

And when we confuse the two—when we let fear dress up as righteousness or let anger masquerade as caution—we start walking toward the dangerous zone.

And if we don’t stop ourselves—if we don’t say, “Wait, is this really fear?”—then we risk becoming Lorincz. Not in the dramatic, door-shooting way. But in the quiet, tragic way: the way that doesn’t see the damage until it’s too late.

So yes, keep a checklist.

Ask yourself:

• Am I protecting myself, or punishing someone?

• Am I afraid, or just furious?

• Am I reacting, or rehearsing?

Because boiled-up anger doesn’t just simmer. It spills. And when it does, someone always gets burned.

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this piece are reflective, interpretive, and occasionally satirical. They are not intended as legal advice, psychological assessment, or a definitive account of any real-life case. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or litigated, is coincidental—or a sign that reality is stranger than fiction. This commentary is offered in the spirit of critical thinking, emotional accountability, and the occasional raised eyebrow. Readers are encouraged to form their own conclusions, consult actual legal professionals when necessary, and—above all—keep their internal checklists up to date.