You Can See Everything

OVERVIEW

You Can See Everything is a documentary that explores our fascination with understanding people and drawing neat conclusions about what we know. Canadian filmmaker, actor, and comedian Nathan Fielder is invited to spend Elizabeth Holmes’ final 30 days of freedom with her before she is sent to prison for fraud. Holmes, once celebrated as the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, seems like a perfect subject for Fielder, whose awkward and intrusive persona, familiar from shows like The Rehearsal, promises an entertaining clash with Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, both of whom refuse to acknowledge that what Holmes did was a crime. Yet the more time Fielder spends with them, the less certain he becomes about who Holmes really is, challenging much of what he thought he knew about her. Two years later, still unsettled by what he experienced and recorded, he returns to the footage in search of answers.

BACKGROUND

As explained at the start of the documentary, the project began with Billy Evans reaching out to A24 with the idea of filming Elizabeth Holmes before she went to prison, hoping to offer a different perspective on her story. Nathan Fielder joined forces with documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, himself known for exploring constructed identities, for what eventually became a nearly four-year production conducted largely in secret. The secrecy extended to the film’s release, with You Can See Everything making its world premiere as a surprise screening at the 2026 Telluride Film Festival, where attendees were required to lock away their phones and asked to keep major revelations out of their reviews (which, of course, didn’t work). The film subsequently screened at the New York Film Festival before reaching theaters two weeks later, accompanied by an unusual amount of hype for a documentary.

THE REVIEW

You Can See Everything is a film that defies expectations, challenging not only what we expect from a documentary but also how much we can trust what it shows us. At first, it seems to present exactly what its trailer suggests: a highly stylized episode of The Rehearsal, with Nathan Fielder bringing his peculiar brand of comedy to a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. Yet it grows more interesting as Fielder, usually one step ahead of his subjects, finds himself at the center of the examination.

Despite running nearly three hours, You Can See Everything never feels long, moving with the brisk precision of a thriller, as its fantastic editing maintains a propulsive rhythm even as new information and directions reposition everything that came before. It is an Oscar-worthy achievement from Fielder’s regular collaborator Adam Locke-Norton, whose work makes the constantly evolving experience feel remarkably cohesive. Cinematographer David Bolen and composer Ari Balouzian, both responsible for much of the personality of Oppenheim’s Primetime earlier this year, once again give the film a strange, unsettling thriller atmosphere. Bolen, in particular, frequently frames Fielder observing the family like a hawk in extreme close-up, which is both comical and weirdly suspenseful, while the Academy aspect ratio keeps all the characters, Fielder included, trapped within the frame. The effect is a constant uncertainty about who is watching, who is being watched, and how we’re supposed to feel about any of it.

The central focus, or so we initially think, is Elizabeth Holmes herself. It’s easy to understand what she and Billy hope to achieve with the documentary: to humanize a figure who has become an internet caricature. We see her tending to her children (who aren’t named) and appearing sincere in her convictions, even when those convictions contradict established facts. Fielder, usually so composed and apparently confident, finds himself increasingly convinced of her sincerity, wondering whether Holmes has been misunderstood all along. His attempts to figure her out range from asking her and Billy the most obvious questions, with his usual impolite, intrusive interruptions, to showing Holmes clips from The Dropout and Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First?” routine.

Billy seems easier to figure out: a young wealthy man who has fallen deeply in love with Holmes, despite knowing what being associated with her would do to his reputation. Yet something still doesn’t quite add up for Fielder, who grows increasingly frustrated and dissatisfied with where his investigation is taking him, as though he hasn’t come close to achieving what he originally intended. It is quite amusing to watch him arrive with his usual smug confidence and a plan, only to find himself challenged in ways he never anticipated. In fact, the moments that work the least are those that feel the most preplanned, such as Fielder handing Holmes a going-away-to-prison gift. That kind of humor, familiar from his television work, doesn’t quite fit the tone of this documentary.

His frustration takes the film into its more fascinating second half, as Fielder approaches Amanda Seyfried, who won awards for her portrayal of Holmes in the extensively researched series The Dropout. The contrast is interesting. Seyfried quickly points out that the series was labeled as fiction from the beginning, and that her performance was based largely on the many clips she watched of Holmes. She arrives with her own understanding of the woman, one that sometimes clashes with Fielder’s and may be easier for the audience to identify with. Yet she, too, is working from an incomplete picture, and her interpretations aren’t necessarily any more reliable than his. As the two continue searching for answers, Seyfried reenacts moments that were never filmed, in a curious exercise that further complicates their search for a complete picture. Why does it seem easier to find Holmes in a fabricated performance than in the real woman herself? Are these reenactments truly bringing them (and us) closer to understanding her, or simply reinforcing the biases already present in Seyfried’s performance and our own perceptions? The film takes some intriguing turns as it digs into these questions, and Seyfried’s participation is extremely courageous and generous (or perhaps foolish). Fielder, meanwhile, never quite subjects himself to the same scrutiny. His assumptions are challenged, but his own position remains strangely distant from the examination. The result is a fascinating and remarkably ambitious documentary, even if it doesn’t quite go as far as its own questions demand.

FINAL THOUGHTS

You Can See Everything leaves us with plenty to think about, especially our ability (and right) to draw conclusions about people based on fragments of information, carefully edited footage, or even worse, a Hulu original series. That it manages to be so thoroughly engrossing while asking such provocative questions is an achievement in itself. Now, is it the masterpiece many claimed it was upon its premiere? Not quite. Its major surprise is genuinely original and fascinating, but for a documentary so interested in questioning how we form judgments about others, does it truly subject its central figure (and here I mean Nathan Fielder himself) to the same scrutiny? Unfortunately, he and Oppenheim never go quite that far. Perhaps the film needed an additional hour in which a therapist watches the documentary with Fielder and offers some revealing observations about him. Now that would be a masterpiece.

At a glance

4/5

“ENGROSSING”

#17 of 214 in 2026 Movies RankedSee the ranking →

Where to watch

🍿New In Theaters

Where to watch

📅Coming soon

Trailer

Play trailer

Related films

‹ ›

American Doctor

★★★★★

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

★★★★★

The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

★★★★★

📅 Coming soon

The Match

★★★★★

Lucy: The Stolen Lives of Elephants

★★★★★