In the spring of 2023, Elizabeth Holmes had 34 days left before she reported to federal prison. She and her partner, Billy Evans, used them to invite a film crew to live in their rented house in Del Mar, California, with their two young children.
The person who ended up on the other side of the camera was Nathan Fielder.
That film, "You Can See Everything," opened in theaters on Friday. Critics have been struggling to describe it since it first screened in September. The New York Post called it wild. The Daily Beast called it the most "WTF" movie of the year. The New York Times rounded up critics calling it "bonkers."
How it happened
Fielder, the deadpan comedian behind "Nathan for You" and "The Rehearsal," had read John Carreyrou's "Bad Blood" and thought the Theranos story had been told. What he was curious about was what Holmes thought. Through a friend, he and co-director Lance Oppenheim heard that she was looking for someone to document her life.
He meant to stay behind the camera. He did not. His exchanges with Holmes and Evans became the film. He is on screen, often in headphones with a portable monitor, asking direct questions and then waiting through long silences.
At first he turned down the couple's offer to stay with them. About 20 days in, he accepted.
A24 let them work for about three years without a deadline, on the understanding that the project could be scrapped if nothing came of it. Fielder has said they knew they had something when the crew started disagreeing among themselves about what was happening in the house.
"Why would I deceive you?"
According to the AP's review, Holmes still says she did nothing wrong and that her blood-testing device worked. She tells Fielder she has never lied. "Why would I deceive you?" she asks in the trailer.
The exchange everyone is sharing goes like this:
"I'm engaging with you as a human being," Holmes says.
"You're being real right now?" Fielder asks.
"I'm always being real."
Billy Evans, the AP says, is the film's biggest puzzle. He says he did not know who Holmes was for the first hour of their first conversation. He corrects her constantly, down to how she mixes raw eggs.
The couple also dispute a well-known line from a 2023 New York Times profile, in which Holmes was quoted as saying people were "not playing me. They're playing a character I created." They say she was misquoted. The Times stands by it.
The secret
Most reviews have been careful not to spoil it. The AP says the film is hard to write about because it "contains a secret the filmmakers hope to keep." Critics say it starts as one kind of documentary and turns into something stranger.
At its surprise premiere at Telluride in September, where viewers had to hand over their phones, Fielder told the audience: "I'm struggling to this day to understand exactly what I experienced."
We are not going to spoil it either.
The reviews
It opened with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes from its early reviews and a 95 on Metacritic. The AP gave it four stars out of four. Variety's Owen Gleiberman called it "a one-of-a-kind reality-TV-as-hangout-movie psychodrama circus." After Telluride, one critic called it "maybe the most hysterical, shocking, insane documentary" he had seen.
Variety's headline called it "shameless" as well as fascinating, and that gets at the real question underneath the praise: a convicted fraudster got to choose who told her story, and spent her last free weeks performing for a camera. Whether the film exposes that performance or simply gives it a bigger stage is the argument it is going to start.
Before you go
It runs 174 minutes, just under three hours. It is rated R for language and some graphic nudity. It is in theaters now from A24, with no streaming date announced.
Holmes is still in federal prison, where she has been since May 2023.
Published Saturday, October 17, 2026. Descriptions of the film's contents come from published reviews by the AP, Variety, The Daily Beast and others; we have avoided details the filmmakers have asked critics not to reveal.
