THE GIRL NEXT DOOR
Heroin is the dark underbelly of Ocean County. While making up less than 7% of the state’s population, the county has the dubious honor of being home to the second most drug overdose deaths in New Jersey. This short documentary film explores the drug epidemic facing our community from the unique perspective of a neighbor who recently lost her childhood friend to a heroin overdose.
TRAILER
STILLS
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
When I lost a close high school friend to an overdose in 2011, I began exploring the idea of making a short documentary about the drug epidemic affecting my hometown of Toms River and the surrounding Ocean County community. I initially envisioned a broader look at a crisis that was taking an enormous toll locally and began lining up potential interviews. Before the project moved forward, however, my sister’s lifelong friend and neighbor, Katelin, died from a fentanyl overdose. Suddenly, a subject I had been approaching as a filmmaker became painfully personal to my family.
After the initial grieving process, my sister and I decided to collaborate on the documentary I had originally set out to make, but the focus changed completely. Rather than allowing statistics to define the story, The Girl Next Door would look at addiction and loss through my sister’s friendship with Katelin and the memories of someone she had known since childhood. We shot the film on a shoestring budget over four days in September 2017. My hope was that by focusing on one friendship and one life, we could put a human face on an epidemic that had taken far too many people from our community.