Monsters Inside: watch the trailer for The 24 Faces Of Billy Milligan, Netflix’s chilling new true crime series

Monsters Inside: watch the trailer for The 24 Faces Of Billy Milligan, Netflix’s chilling true crime series

Credit: Netflix

Under Her Eye


Monsters Inside: watch the trailer for The 24 Faces Of Billy Milligan, Netflix’s chilling new true crime series

By Amy Beecham

4 years ago

Thank you, Netflix – our next bone-chilling true crime, Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces Of Billy Milligan, finally has a trailer.

We already have Netflix to thank for bringing us some of the most gripping true crime series ever made, from Making a Murderer and Abducted in Plain Sight to The Ted Bundy Tapes and Killer Inside: The Mind Of Aaron Hernandez. And now, from the director of Taken 2 and 3 comes a chilling new docuseries about Billy Milligan, the man with “24 faces.”

Milligan was the subject of a highly publicised court case in Ohio in the late 1970s. After he was arrested for committing three sexual assaults on a university campus, he was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder, with his lawyers pleading insanity in his trial.

Milligan was the first person diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder to use such a defense and was eventually found innocent, but to this day many question the validity of his condition.

Netflix's new chilling docuseries explores the true crime case of Billy Milligan

Credit: Netflix

Now, a four-part series, Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan, will attempt to untangle the truth. 

What is Monsters Inside about?

The Netflix synopsis for the series reads: “Director Olivier Megaton brings his feature film sensibility to this gripping investigative series, setting up cinematic interviews with the Milligan family, as well as friends, doctors, and the law enforcement professionals who’ve tried to untangle the truth.

Over 40 years since the landmark verdict, nearly everyone is still asking questions: Were Billy’s multiple personalities indeed controlling his actions, or were they a convenient cover for a brilliant narcissistic sociopath?

To what extent should charismatic criminals benefit from their notoriety? And were Billy’s most violent crimes still to come?”

Prior to his trial, Milligan was diagnosed with severe schizophrenia, which was later changed to multiple personality disorder. According to assessments made while he was in several mental health facilities after he was sentenced, Milligan reported having 10 different personalities. Later, when receiving treatment from a psychiatrist, an additional 14 personalities, labeled “The Undesirables”, were discovered.

Among the first ten were Arthur, a prim and proper; Allen, a manipulator; Tommy, an escape artist and technophile; Ragen Vadascovinich, a Yugoslav communist; and Adalana, a 19-year-old lesbian woman. The later-discovered personalities also included Christene, a three-year-old child and Shawn, a deaf four-year-old boy. 

Is there a trailer for Monsters Inside?

“Have you ever seen someone change personalities right in front of your eyes,” the voiceover of the trailer asks.

Alongside archival footage, in one clip Mulligan can be seen announcing “Every time I wake up, somebody says I did something bad”. In another recording, Mulligan tells a police interviewer “It still bugs me when they call me Billy…I’m not Billy.”

Watch the full trailer below:

Mulligan’s fascinating case has already inspired the 1996 thriller Primal Fear, and James McAvoy and M Night Shyamalan’s psychological nail-biter Split, about a man with 23 alter egos that kidnaps three teenage girls.

James McAvoy's psychological thriller Split is loosely based on Milligan's condition

Credit: Universal Pictures

Where can I watch Monsters Inside?

True crime fans, there’s not long to wait. Season 1 is coming to Netflix on 22 September. 

Images: Netflix/Universal

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