‘You Can See Everything’ Becomes the Year’s Best-Reviewed Movie With Near-Perfect Scores

Elizabeth Holmes has been the subject of more screen projects than almost any other fallen founder. The Theranos story has already inspired the HBO documentary ‘The Inventor’ in 2019 and the Hulu series ‘The Dropout’ in 2022, which starred Amanda Seyfried as Holmes.

Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 after dropping out of Stanford at 19, promising technology that could run many medical tests from a few drops of blood. At its peak the company was valued at around $9 billion, but the technology did not work as promised, and she was later convicted of defrauding investors and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

Few expected another Holmes film to feel fresh. Then A24 revealed a secret project that had been filmed in the shadows for years, and it has turned into the most talked-about release of the fall.

‘You Can See Everything‘ is directed by comedian Nathan Fielder, in his feature directorial debut, and documentarian Lance Oppenheim. It is now the best-reviewed movie of the year by the numbers, with a 100% Tomatometer score on Rotten Tomatoes from 76 reviews and a 99% Popcornmeter score from more than 100 verified ratings. On Metacritic, it holds a 98 based on 31 critic reviews, which falls under the site’s ‘universal acclaim’ label.

Those scores are rare for any film, and even rarer for a nearly three-hour documentary. The movie runs 174 minutes and is rated R, and A24 is giving it a limited theatrical release starting Oct. 16, in fewer than 1,000 theaters. Projections have it opening to between $8 million and $13 million.

The movie was kept under wraps until it surprised audiences as the secret screening at the Telluride Film Festival in early September. Its official synopsis says it begins 34 days before Holmes is sent to prison, when she invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. What starts as an intimate portrait of an enigmatic felon turns into what the studio calls a mind-bending three-year journey.

Fielder and Oppenheim filmed in secret for years, and Fielder lived with Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, at a rental home in San Diego in the days before she reported to prison in 2023. The film features Holmes, Evans and their two children, and some portions that depict Fielder communicating with Holmes after she entered prison in Texas were re-created with the help of an A-list actress, according to NBC News.

Fielder, best known for ‘Nathan for You’ and ‘The Rehearsal’, makes himself part of the story. Viewers watch him spar with Holmes and decide for themselves whether he is being lied to, and if so, whether it’s working. Oppenheim brings documentary experience from ‘Some Kind of Heaven’, ‘Spermworld’ and the HBO series ‘Ren Faire’, and he also directed ‘Primetime’, which premiered at Venice just days before Telluride.

The teaser trailer ‘YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING,’ a documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. Thirty-four days before she’s sent to prison, Elizabeth Holmes invites a skeptical film crew to document her every move. In theaters this October. https://t.co/LHRvYLXULH

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) September 7, 2026

The reviews have been glowing. Vulture’s Alison Willmore declared it the movie of the year, and Rolling Stone’s David Fear called it unabashedly brilliant. The Guardian praised its twisting, destabilizing structure, and Deadline’s Pete Hammond said the access to its subjects was unlike any documentary he had seen.

Critics have pointed to the film’s meta-narrative about how people try to gauge the truth, and to how Fielder’s own eccentricity interacts with Holmes’s. Several described Holmes as an uncanny and elusive subject whose steady gaze unsettles even the filmmaker.

Not every reaction is unqualified. Some critics had reservations about the near three-hour runtime and about Fielder’s treatment of Holmes. Even so, the overall consensus is unusually strong, and the film is being called one of the most transfixing documentaries in years.

The film’s hybrid style has led some Oscar watchers to ask whether it will be treated as a documentary or compete in broader categories. Reports note that no documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture, and some outlets have speculated that this one could be the first.

Holmes has continued to maintain her innocence, and her projected release date is Feb. 22, 2030, according to Bureau of Prisons records. Internationally, the film arrives in Australia and New Zealand on Nov. 12, with other territories still to be announced.

For now, the numbers speak loudly. A documentary with a perfect critics’ score and a 99% audience score is a once-in-a-blue-moon event, and A24 will be hoping word of mouth carries it well beyond its limited rollout.

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