Sleepwalking is looked at as a silly lighthearted act and is often featured in cartoon and slapstick comedy bits. But sleepwalking has a side that is both dark and deadly. What exactly are we capable of under this zombie-like state? Can it go as far as murder? Dead Asleep sets out to uncover the facts of such a case and seeks to start a conversation about what is or isn’t possible. The documentary chronicles the moments leading up to and after Brooke Preston was brutally murdered by her best friend Randy Herman Jr. Herman Jr. claims to have no memory of the attack and attributes the amnesia to sleepwalking while murdering Preston. 

HorrorBuzz got to speak with Dead Asleep director Skye Borgman about her career, the film, and future projects. Borgman is an award-winning director whose credits included Murdered and Missing in Montana, Abducted in Plain Sight, and Junk Dreams. Dead Asleep will debut on Hulu on December 16, 2021. 

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: I wanted to start off by asking just a little bit about you before we jump into the film. I know that you did cinematography for a long time so what initiated that shift for you to go from cinematography to the directorial world?

SKYE BORGMAN: So many people set out and say “I’m going to be a director” but that certainly wasn’t what I was doing. I had a love of imagery from a very young age and I got an undergraduate degree in theater and I sort of spent my 20s as a traveler traveling around to different places. When I came back I started thinking about what I could do that would combine those loves of travel and imagery and storytelling. And that really landed worked out for me with documentaries.

I felt very comfortable with a camera so capturing images of people was really what I wanted to be doing. It really made a very solid groundwork for how my career played out I guess because in documentaries, especially with independent documentaries, you are doing so much the work. You’re out there with the camera asking questions, you’re doing sound, you’re doing everything so it gave me a very well-rounded knowledge base of how to put something together. 

With Abducted in Plain Sight, this was a film a did a few years ago on Netflix, it was really the transition into directing pretty much exclusively now. I’m not really doing cinematography anymore outside of picking up a camera on set and shooting something but it was really that film that ushered me into the directing world. 

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: In that vein of Abducted in Plain Sight and obviously with Dead Asleep, you seem to have become a master of the true crime documentary. With true crime you are telling a very delicate story so are there any challenges with that particular genre? 

SKYE BORGMAN: I think all of the different genres have unique challenges. I think really within the crime space there is that sensitivity that exists from the very beginning. Reaching out to people and talking to them when you’re in the field to gain that trust and form some sort of relationship with people before you meet them in person, and when you meet them in person, and then holding onto that when you’re in post (production). I think with crime there’s a lot that you have to balance. There’s the sensitivity that you have to balance but there’s a lot of ethics to balance. 

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: I’m glad you mentioned that, because I did get to watch Dead Asleep before this and one of the things I noticed is that it is wonderfully neutral. It feels like a presentation of the facts and is very well-rounded. Is it difficult maintaining that air of neutrality regardless of your opinions? Or do you only choose cases that you are neutral to? What is your process?

SKYE BORGMAN: It was really important to me with this film to strike a good balance. For me, while making it, I was constantly pulled in different directions. One day I would think Randy was sleepwalking then the next I would think there is no way he could have been sleepwalking. That experience of talking to people and doing the research was something that really guided me in post (production). I wanted to be pulled in both of these directions. I want to be examining things that I don’t know 1000%. I want to be learning something during the process as well as discovering things. 

I want that conversation to continue once the credits roll. I don’t necessarily want to be working on projects where at the end of it you go great, ok, all done… I know what happened and I turn and walk away and the conversation doesn’t continue. I want people sitting on the sofa going, “Well do you think he was sleepwalking? Or do you think he was lying? Or do you think he was experiencing trauma and just forgot it? I want that conversation to continue because I think that’s where documentaries have a lot of power.

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: I agree. Even post-film, it has marinated in my head and I still don’t know where I land on it. I don’t want to make any assumptions but is that what drew you to the Randy Herman case? 

SKYE BORGMAN: Yes it absolutely was. As we were filming, it became clear to me that everybody thinks, or at least I always did I don’t want to speak for everybody, that sleepwalking was a funny or comedic thing. And to see this horrible, tragic, brutal event happen and to say that it happened during sleepwalking I mean those two worlds just crash together and that was interesting to me. Can someone actually kill in their sleep and not have any memory of it?

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: This is a good example of one of the things that fascinate people about horror. You take something so innocent or silly and you turn it into this sinister thing. How many fiction films have done that and taken something innocent like a child’s laugh and put it in a frightening context and it becomes this really sinister thing. Because of that, I think this will be a case that sticks with people 

SKYE BORGMAN: I think so too. Randy and Brooke were friends. It’s not a jilted lover situation. There’s no motive. You can usually unravel something and in a backward way reconstruct how it got to this point but in this case, it is almost impossible to do that. 

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: Yes definitely. And in production, you are getting so close to people in the interview process. When you are immersed in a story with real people and real events that isn’t something a writer’s room came up with, there must be a heaviness attached to that. Does the production process on something like this impact you on a deeper level than other forms of film?

SKYE BORGMAN: It is emotional It is always emotional to talk to these people and experience this with them. You spend so much time in the post (production) process putting the story together, reliving these different elements. Post is longer so it feels more challenging because it is more stretched out and dealing with these emotions is challenging, it’s definitely difficult. 

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: To be so close to something so real, you must be passionate about what you do. Of all the stories that you choose to tell it seems that you favor true crime. What is it about true crime that makes you want to get up and spend the next three months of your life completely immersed in what is essentially a pretty horrible story? 

SKYE BORGMAN: From beginning to end, these projects are about a year long so it is a commitment and an investment. I think it’s funny because I know I’m considered a true crime director but I’ve never thought about these true crime stories as true crime. I think of them as human stories and I’ve always been really fascinated with the frailty of the human condition and that’s never more present than it is in these crime stories. You see people at their best, you see people at their worst, and you see how they got there. It really is the most fascinating thing to me to be able to look at people and try to figure out what makes them tick and how we got here. 

LINDSEY- HORRORBUZZ: Do you have other works that you are currently working on? 

SKYE BORGMAN: I have a couple of films that will be out next year. Hopefully one in the spring and one in the summer or fall depending on how post (production) goes. So there will be a couple more projects to chat about. 

LINDSEY-HORRORBUZZ: Just a fun question, let’s pretend no crime or human interest story has ever been covered, is there a particular crime, story, or moment that you would love to cover and tell in your own way? 

SKYE BORGMAN: If we are talking about a complete dream scenario, a fantastical dream, I would love to go back in time and do the Black Dahlia. It’s completely impossible, but I would love to be there, be back in time and do that. I think that would be fascinating. 

LINDSEY-HORRORBUZZ: To wrap up, where do you see the future of documentaries going? 

SKYE BORGMAN: I think it’s the most nimble, eclectic genre there is. There are no rules. You can do a documentary without interviewing anybody. You can do a documentary that’s animated. You can do a documentary where you film it in a day. I mean, it’s the wild west of filmmaking and that’s part of what I love about it. In Dead Asleep, I got to film with miniatures for the first time. It was a really interesting way to tell the story of what happened in the house that night. I’m thrilled that documentaries are becoming more mainstream than they were 10-20 years ago. So I’m really excited to see what the documentary world has to put out there in different ways of telling these really human and intimate stories. 

Be sure to catch Dead Asleep Thursday December 16, 2021 on Hulu!