Nathan Fielder’s Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Is Already One of the Year’s Biggest Surprises as Rotten Tomatoes Score Is Revealed

Nathan Fielder’s new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes has arrived with almost no warning and is already getting a huge amount of attention. You Can See Everything was kept secret until its surprise screening at the Telluride Film Festival, where audiences finally discovered what had been hiding behind the mystery. Now the film has opened with a perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from its first 10 reviews, giving the unusual project an impressive start.

The movie comes from Fielder and filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, a combination that was always likely to produce something different. Fielder is known for projects that mix real situations with carefully planned performances, while Oppenheim has built a reputation for unusual documentaries that blur the line between observation and storytelling. Their new film takes that approach into the world of Holmes, the former Theranos founder whose rise and fall became one of the biggest business scandals of the past decade.

The documentary follows Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, during a period when her life was about to change dramatically. According to the details surrounding the project, Holmes invited Fielder and Oppenheim into her home just 34 days before she was due to begin her federal prison sentence for defrauding investors. What started as a short filming period eventually became a three-year project, turning the documentary into something much larger than the filmmakers originally expected.

That unusual access is one of the main reasons the movie has attracted so much attention. Instead of simply looking back at the Theranos scandal through interviews and old footage, Fielder and Oppenheim spent real time around Holmes and her family. The result appears to be a much stranger and more personal look at someone who has already been the subject of countless news reports, documentaries, podcasts, and scripted shows.

The early reviews suggest that this is not a traditional documentary either. Critics have struggled to describe exactly what Fielder and Oppenheim have created, with some comparing the experience to reality television mixed with a strange character study. Variety critic Owen Gleiberman described it as a “one-of-a-kind reality-TV-as-hangout-movie psychodrama circus,” according to his review. That unusual description gives a good idea of why the film is getting so much attention.

Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com was also extremely positive about the movie, giving it a perfect score and suggesting that it could help push nonfiction filmmaking in a new direction. That kind of praise is especially notable because the movie is not simply being celebrated for telling the Theranos story again. Critics seem more interested in the way Fielder and Oppenheim tell it.

The film also includes Amanda Seyfried, who has her own connection to the Holmes story. Seyfried played a fictionalized version of Holmes in the television series The Dropout, a performance that earned her an Emmy. Having her appear in this documentary adds another strange layer to a movie already focused on the gap between real life and performance. It also raises questions about how Holmes has been represented by Hollywood and the media over the years.

Another unusual part of the project is its nearly three-hour runtime. You Can See Everything runs for two hours and 54 minutes, which is a major commitment for audiences. However, early festival reactions suggest the length has not stopped viewers from becoming absorbed in the story. Instead, the extended runtime appears to give Fielder and Oppenheim room to let situations play out rather than rushing through Holmes’ life and legal troubles.

The filmmakers also faced a major challenge when Holmes entered prison. Their access to her naturally became more limited, but they did not abandon the project. Instead, they found ways to keep the story moving, turning those restrictions into another part of the documentary itself. That gives the movie another unusual element because the process of making it becomes part of what audiences are watching.

A24 will release You Can See Everything in theaters on October 16. The company is bringing the movie to audiences after its surprise Telluride debut, where it quickly became one of the festival’s most talked-about films. With a perfect early Rotten Tomatoes score and a premise that is difficult to compare with anything else, the documentary already looks like one of the more unusual releases of the year.

Whether the perfect score lasts as more reviews arrive remains to be seen. But the early response makes one thing clear: Fielder and Oppenheim have found a completely different way to revisit one of the most familiar scandals in modern business history. Instead of simply explaining what happened at Theranos, You Can See Everything appears determined to make audiences sit inside Holmes’ strange world and decide for themselves what they are really watching.

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