It’s rare that a documentary—much less one with shaky, sometimes sideways video footage—becomes the number 1 streaming hit in the nation, but Netflix’s The Perfect Neighbor makes for especially compelling viewing. Comprised almost entirely of video surveillance, doorbell, and police body-worn camera footage, the film chronicles months of escalating tensions between Susan Lorincz, a middle-aged white woman, and her mostly Black neighbors in an Ocala, Florida community.

Over the course of a year and a half, we repeatedly see police officers responding to Lorincz’s 911 calls about children playing in a grassy lot next door, claiming they are disturbing her. Officers—always in pairs, often the same ones—then trudge across the street to speak with neighbors, who call Lorincz the “Karen lad

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