Fear Thy Neighbor

Great crime documentary save for one problem: Before every commercial break there's a run of upcoming scenes, and unless you're prepared to very quickly mute the TV and close your eyes, these will be spoilers. Viewers are supposed to be held in suspense. But when a "coming up" preview shows the person you LEAST suspect swinging a weapon ... that just ruins the suspense. We don't need the spoilers. I want to be sitting at the edge of my seat, wondering who's going to blow first. The inserted previews ruin this experience. I hope the director of this series sees my review. STOP THE SPOILERS!

Muting the TV and closing one's eyes isn't a practical solution. Sometimes I'm caught off guard, or someone else in the room has the remote.

This series features episodes based on actual cases where a dispute between neighbors escalate to the point they end in bloodshed. They use actors to play the families and neighbors involved in actual cases and recreate actual events of disputes that end tragically. I'm sure they take some dramatic license but they seem try to include the actual events that started the first conflict and subsequent escalation that ended in tragedy. How accurate these are I can't say but they do include commentary of actual members of the 2 or more families involved along with the actual neighbors and friends. So they recreate the story including some of the actual people providing their recollection of the events to tell the stories of tragic events. I watch it with with my 21 year-old son and we are both intrigued with the show. Regardless of how accurate the recreation by actors may be, the viewer does learn the final outcome. It certainly shows the viewer why you want to do everything you can to be good neighbors and how tragically things can end when you don't.

I am genuinely enthralled by this series. It's insane to me how different all these incidents are, yet the profile of the bloody climax is almost always the same. There's neighbors fighting over cleanliness of property, fences, property lines, kids, love triangles, noise, etc. The whole neighborhood is always aware of the escalation between the parties and most of the time the police were called (sometimes multiple times) with no result because there was lack of proof. It's almost always alpha males who want to go to literal war over property or some petty hill they want to die on. The feuds shown that often escalate to gun violence are almost inevitable. There are many bonafide FAFO situations that no one can do anything except watch it unfold like a train wreck. There's interviews with the families involved and stories told by helpless surrounding neighbors. Every incident goes way past the point of no return and escalates to a deadly ending. Gunfire, fires, destroyed property, firecrackers, fist fights, menacing with a vehicle, killing grass, killing pets, decapitation...and I'm only like 10 episodes in. It's insane. This is a showcase of human beings who are ticking time bombs. I always have a motto: I'm friendly with my neighbors, but I'm not their friend. After watching Fear Thy Neighbor, I feel even more justified in that belief. Lol.

Seeing neighbors kill each other over silly things like dog doo on their lawn will make you a nicer person. I no longer scream at people in my apartment building for minor etiquette infractions in the laundry room.

Complete with corny acting, everybody's right/nobody's wrong, overly intense narration, and genuine home surveillance footage at times. But that screeching, nails on chalkboard, sword coming from sheath, high pitch sound effect they play dozens of times per episode forces me to take breaks more than I want to.

I hope the person who had the idea to add that wretched noise has sons who are only mediocre in sports.