Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Is a Masterclass in Manufactured Uncertainty

A24's new documentary 'You Can See Everything,' co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, takes a radically different approach to Elizabeth Holmes than the well-worn Theranos exposé format. Rather than relitigating the fraud — Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors and began serving an 11-year prison sentence in May 2023 — the film turns Holmes' unsettling presence into its actual subject. Fielder conducted intimate interviews with Holmes in the weeks before she reported to prison, and the camera stays uncomfortably close, capturing every micro-expression and mascara clump as she deflects, smiles, and insists she has never told a lie in her adult life.

The film deliberately resists easy conclusions. Holmes maintains her innocence throughout despite the conviction, and her answers are rarely satisfying — but that's almost the point. The documentary operates less as an investigation and more as a psychological thriller, forcing viewers to sit inside the discomfort of not knowing what to believe. The reviewer found themselves cycling rapidly between unease at Holmes' vacant affect and unexpected pity, then snapping back to suspicion that the pity was itself engineered — a feature, not a bug, of Holmes' notorious charisma.

This sets 'You Can See Everything' apart from its predecessors. Alex Gibney's 'The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley' mapped Theranos' deceptions exhaustively, and Hulu's scripted miniseries 'The Dropout' dramatized Holmes' origin story. Both leaned into the 'next Steve Jobs' mythology and the mechanics of her rise and fall. Fielder and Oppenheim instead offer something rarer: the experience of being in the room with Holmes and feeling her pull in real time.

Fielder himself is not immune. Though he pushes back early — telling Holmes bluntly that no one will ever believe her again — he gradually seems drawn closer rather than repelled. Near the film's end, a friend questions whether Fielder is unconsciously softening his recollections of Holmes because he's grown protective of her. Fielder's flustered denial is one of the film's most revealing moments. At a New York screening Q&A, Oppenheim described how the crew would erupt in dynamic disagreements about what they'd just witnessed after each shoot day. Fielder, more than three years later, says he still hasn't fully processed it — and is hoping audience reactions help him figure it out.