Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Dead Asleep’ on Hulu, a Sloppy True-Crime Documentary About a Sleepwalking Killer

Hulu’s Dead Asleep hits all the true-crime qualifiers: Grisly murder, high-profile tragedy, unusual court case. In 2017, Randy Herman Jr. attacked and killed his roommate and longtime friend Brooke Preston, stabbing her 25 times – then claimed he had no recollection of what happened because he was sleepwalking at the time. Director Skye Borgman (Abducted in Plain Sight) digs into Herman’s story, even interviewing him in prison, where he’s currently serving a life sentence. But she never got Preston’s family to participate in the doc, resulting in one of the genre’s weaker entries.

DEAD ASLEEP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The doc is immediately sensationalistic: We hear a 911 call, and it’s Herman, reporting his own misdeed. Randy and Brooke had moved from smalltown Pennsylvania to West Palm Beach, Florida, where they lived as roommates with Brooke’s older sister, Jordan Preston. They were in their early 20s, liked to party, hoped for greener pastures down south. They were childhood friends, tight like siblings, and at first glance, you’d wonder if the weren’t from vastly different peer groups – she’s described as outgoing, bubbly and athletic, and he’s described as short in stature, chubby and relatively introverted. Borgman gives us portraits via their social media: There’s Brooke in a bikini, playing beer pong and having a great time; there’s Randy, live-streaming self-involved commentary and taking a long pull from a bottle of beer.

What went so wrong that Randy would brutally murder such a close friend? That’s the hangup here. A forensic expert describes a “vicious crime scene.” Blood was splattered throughout the three-bedroom house they shared, evidence of a considerable struggle. He remembered what happened before and after the murder, but couldn’t remember how or why it happened. We see grainy police footage of Herman being interrogated, whimpering and confessing; we see grainy police footage of Brooke’s mother breaking down as she learns how her daughter died. B

Bergman interviews Randy’s public defender, who admits that coming up with a defense for this case was incredibly difficult. Randy’s admission to the killing “seemed like a genuine lack of recollection,” the lawyer says, so they came up with an insanity plea insisting Randy killed her while sleepwalking. His mother and sister say he sleepwalked often throughout his life. Psychologists analyze Randy from afar: He grew up with two women; his father wasn’t a big part of his life, and committed a murder-suicide; he may have been harboring feelings for Brooke, and jealous of her boyfriend. Lawyers discuss legal precedent; experts discuss the science of sleepwalking; journalists discuss the trial; jurors discuss parsing the evidence on their way to a guilty verdict. Does any of this add up?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Netflix docs American Murder: The Family Next Door and Why Did You Kill Me? are similarly sensational, but not nearly as sloppy as Dead Asleep.

Performance Worth Watching: None of Bergman’s talking heads stands out – but it’s odd how so few of her interviewees come off as credible or insightful.

Memorable Dialogue: Randy, calling his mother from prison: “I just wish I knew how I did it.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: So if Dead Asleep were to properly answer the question whether it’s possible to commit murder while sleepwalking, it would probably be a profound breakthrough in medical science. Maybe it goes without saying that that’s unlikely. But curiously, Bergman doesn’t aim for ambiguity, an analysis of the mysteries of the human mind. Instead, the director throws together a bunch of information and speculation that never comes together coherently. It’s manipulative and lacks rigor, the material parched for deeper analysis that might happen if interviewees faced stronger lines of questioning – or if Brooke’s family were here to share their views. But they’re not, which renders the documentary not just incomplete, but irreparably broken.

Yet Bergman soldiers on anyway, as if facing a contractual mandate to produce a documentary on the subject. In-between the talking heads, the film pieces together piles of social media screenshots, close-ups of cassette tapes rolling in players, a weird 3-D diorama with figurines arranged to dramatize Brooke’s final moments, surveillance footage of people doing odd things in their sleep and bleary POV shots of what sleepwalkers might experience. The police footage of Brooke’s mother weeping is particularly exploitationist, considering her desire not to participate in the film, and is some real Hard Copy horseshit. A sleep psychologist discusses the “reptilian instincts” all humans have, which may manifest during sleepwalking; cue a scary shot of a big-fanged snake striking at an invisible target, as apt a metaphor for this film as any.

There’s a whole host of problems and dangling thoughtlines here: The experts interviewed offer very little clarity on the science of sleepwalking. The lawyer commentary is problematic; remember, they share arguments, not necessarily truth. There’s a brief tangent on the topic of toxic masculinity, which may or may not apply to an armchair psychoanalysis of Randy. Journalists tell us how they Googled other sleepwalking murder cases in preparation for the murder trial. Randy’s mother insinuates that an expensive criminal lawyer might’ve been able to get Randy off the hook, but they didn’t have the money. And there’s a real howler of an assertion made that the murder weapon here, a buck knife, is just a common thing to be found on the nightstands of Floridians. OK, cool! Just go with that, let’s not ask why, or put any effort into poking holes in that flimsy declaration. Dead Asleep is a frankly irresponsible piece of quasi-journalism that reaches only one solid conclusion: The backlash against true crime docs is justified.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Dead Sleep is bottom-of-the-barrel true crime crud.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.

Stream Dead Asleep on Hulu