Note: I have tried very hard in this review to avoid spoiling most of what happens here, but nevertheless you have been warned. The TL, DR that usually goes at the bottom of something like this is right here – run, don’t walk to see this movie, no matter who you are. See it with a crowd. Now. This is the finest moviegoing experience I have had in 2026, if not the decade, and is a film to celebrate.
I’ll get this right out of the way – You Can See Everything is the event movie of the moment and is even better than you think it’s going to be. There’s a reason that this is an instant hit and people are seeking it out by audiences across North America. After its first breakthrough at the Telluride Film Festival last August where the movie was shown as a secret screening, the immediate reaction afterwards has taken on a life of its own and had an organic outreach. The word-of-mouth is happening. People are telling others to see it. I personally know some people have already seen this movie a second or third time by the time I published this review over the movie’s opening weekend.
This is so exciting to me, because this movie is the kind of moviegoing experience that I live for and is the reason this site exists as a way to champion movies like this. It’s a journey that I will never forget and with its daring premise and unpredictable nature, it truly takes chances, gets away with them and refuses to let the audience go. I sat for nearly three hours in a complete daze, oblivious of the world around me, and was deposited me back into the world at its end, in a state of shock, in tears and completely exhilarated after the credits finished. This is a movie I am still thinking about days after seeing and the type of experience that is the absolute definition of why I love movies.
There’s a moment in You Can See Everything that cemented my love for the medium of cinema and the documentary form, and I’ll try to dance around the details as to not give much away. At the start, we learn about disgraced Theranos inventor Elizabeth Holmes and that she is going to prison in Bryan, Texas for fraudulent activity after faking a medical device that can run blood tests and medical diagnosis from a person by a single drop of blood. Her invention sparked fascination and an incredible anount of money and fame for its inventor, and then it all came crashing down (and several shows, one starring Amanda Seyfried playing her, have come out). We learn soon that she has made a wild decision to contact A24 to have a film crew come and film her every move before she heads to prison in Bryan, Texas along with featuring her partner Billy Evans and their kids. Then two unique filmmakers named Nathan Fielder (himself a famous documentarian and even is learning to be a pilot on the side) and Lance Oppeheim (who also has a good movie called PRIMETIME out right now) come into the picture, with Holmes probably not knowing their past and exactly how they would depict this production.
This moment comes when we realize Holmes is thinking that she is still innocent, but one of the filmmakers (let’s call him the humble investigator), is aware of something she did and is convinced she is lying about something, and tries to get a response out of said subject by showing her a clip from the famous Abbott & Costello “First Base” sequence, then questions her on it. The result of this scene is utterly fascinating as we carefully watch Elizabeth react to his questions and we, as the viewer, are also challenged to look deep into her big, rarely blinking eyes, to wonder about what is going on in her soul.
This is just a small bit of what makes this experience so fascinating to the viewer, in that we are mostly situated in Holmes’ house and feel like complete voyeurs, and it’s a miracle that the footage reveals itself the way it does. The majority of the film’s first two hours simply watches Elizabeth and Billy, sometimes TOO much, with a careful film crew of seven people utilizing digital cameras very carefully in mostly close-ups, careful framing and slow push-ins on its subjects including Nathan himself, who didn’t intend to be in the footage but eventually became a paricipant. For a strong portion of the run time, we are asked to do a little work of our own and watch micro-expressions on faces, quirks and REALLY listen to what everyone is saying and are also dying for answers.
Watching YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING was an out of body experience for this film-fan. I became completely wrapped up in the world of this movie and its subject and was 100% engaged to the small, 4×3 screen frame for its epic run time. Time and the outside world completely disappeared and with its claustrophobic look, I feel like I have not been as engaged in a movie like this in many years. Even as an avid moviegoer I sometimes admit my mind wanders after watching too many movies or I start thinking about what I am going to write about, or where I am going to get coffee after the screening. Here, I completely surrendered to this world and not only had no idea how this movie would end and also didn’t want it to end either. That is the true sign of a great movie experience, and I was also really pleased to hear the audience reactions at my screening as well, with surprised laughter throughout and even some audible reactions when the movie takes its many unpredictable turns. With that said, this isn’t just a movie about Elizabeth and whether or not she is guilty of what she did. I think we are all drawn to True Crime stories, but what sets this apart is that it’s more about what is shown and what could be hiding, questions that are not answered, and truths are revealed what it means to the subjects around them, including her Billy Evans who may also have a connection that we were not thinking of. The film even takes this a step further when certain sequences are brought back later to other subjects as well.
Viwers that come to see this to think you are getting an “A-ha” moment pn Elizabeth Holmes is missing the point; Holmes eventually goes to prison at roughly the two hour mark in this documentary, and after she goes to prison a third act happens that is the most significant “going down the rabbit hole” puzzle that is such an endlessly fascinating piece of filmmaking made me think (although not TOTALLY related) of the cinematic trickery that Orson Wells did in his 1971 movie F For Fake, and uses a particular subject in such a way that I have never only seen in a movie before, but one done so perfectly that this movie takes us to a level few movies have done in the past, even narrative features. How far will a filmmaker go to search for answers and to seek the truth? The absolute genius of all of this is that it also deconstructs the documentary medium itself and even goes back on its own footage in areas in powerful form, and should be shown and discussed in film schools in the future.
I have tried very hard to avoid spoiling exactly the content that fascinated me here, and really want the viewer to find this movie and cherish it in the way that I did, and then pass it along to other fans of the medium. I felt something of a cultural event that is coming out of this movie and You Can See Everything is a movie that I am going to think about for a very long time, if not for the rest of my film-loving days.
Rating: 10 out of 10
