Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan

Netflix trying to make a series out of a story that could be told in one episode.

When I discovered this one on Netflix, I thought it would be really interesting. The idea of somebody that had multiple personalities being culpable for a crime and how they dealt with it seems like a really interesting story and it was fascinating to watch and try to determine whether this was somebody with multiple personalities or somebody with a very dedicated and clever cover story. Would you really be committed for 10 years in a mental institution and be studied every day over just going to jail? I still feel undecided either way.

However what really let this production down was how it was put together. There was an actor that had been used for reconstructions that looked similar to Billy Milligan at the time of the crimes and in between interviews with family members and people that worked with Billy, there were constant cutaway scenes that were in and out of focus, zooming in and out and spliced together just to look very erratic.

They were also newspaper articles for things being highlighted or underlined quickly I'm just in general it was a little bit garbled and actually distracted you quite a lot from the storyline. There was also for some reason this really melancholy cowboy influenced country music in the background and it quite honestly reminded me of playing something like red dead redemption. I didn't really feel that the music was relevant to Billy Milligan. Normally crime documentaries like this I am absolutely captivated by but with this particular one I found myself losing interest in drifting onto my phone instead without really losing any of the storyline.

I have to admit that I got to episode 3 and by that point I'd had enough of trying to follow the storyline with all of the cutaway scenes and the cheesy effects so I remove the series from my watchlist and went in researched it myself online.

The story itself is very interesting and the archive footage of Billy being interviewed under several "personas" were fascinating to watch but apart from that, I don't feel that this really did justice to telling his story and was let down by all of the irritating cut scenes.

The story of Billy Milligan is fascinating, a serial rapist and habitual criminal, who had a unique defence, multiple personality disorder. The story is fascinating, if you have an interest in psychology, or indeed in films such as Split, there really is a fascinating story here.

My advice however would be to read the various texts published, as this production isn't good. This is the most over produced documentary series that you will ever see, the cutaways, made up footage, and interviews are all over the place, it is a jumbled mess.

Too many people are interviewed, and the information is all too sporadic, too chaotic, it makes it so difficult to follow and engage in.

There are some fascinating accounts, Billy's siblings are fascinating to hear, unfortunately the camera is zooming all over the place, and the music overtakes, which is a real shame.

A fascinating story, unfortunately it's an over produced mess, which is two episodes too long, 5/10.

I'm sorry to say but I'm not sure the director of this documentary know what he is doing. The scenarios where the various actors are interviewed are hilarious out of place: inside a safe? Between two shelves? In a cell? Along some corridors? The editing is confusing, musics excessive.

The story is interesting but very poorly told.

This documentary is chaotic, the storyline is as disjointed as the choppy editing. While the story is interesting, there is just too much going on and the doc tries to cover it all. Spending too much time in the first two episodes replaying the same interview footage and then rushing through 40 years in the last two episodes. Too many people were interviewed, and what was with the French psychologists?! A wild story but a poorly made documentary.