You Can See Everything: Is the Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Worth Seeing?

Opinion and analysis as of Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. Scores and forecasts change once the film opens on Oct. 16.

Let me be straight before anything else: I haven't seen You Can See Everything. It opens Friday, and what I have is what everyone has right now, a stack of festival reviews, a trailer, and a premise so strange I keep rereading it. Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder, let a film crew into her home 34 days before she reported to federal prison, and the title tells you the deal she offered them.

That's the hook, but it isn't why I'm writing about it on a Wednesday. What got me is the score. Before it has even opened, the film sits at a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the critics aren't being polite. One reviewer calls it the film of the year. Another says you may walk out unsure what you just watched. For a 174-minute documentary about a woman most of us think we've already figured out, that's a surprising thing to read.

Quick Rundown

You Can See Everything is an A24 documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim. It opens in theaters Friday, Oct. 16, runs 174 minutes and is rated R.
It follows Holmes and her partner Billy Evans over about three years, starting 34 days before she reported to prison. Amanda Seyfried appears in it too.
It has a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes before release. The audience score isn't out yet.
Holmes is scheduled to move to a halfway house on Aug. 23, 2027, and her scheduled release date is Feb. 22, 2030.
My take: reviewers describe a film about why she wanted to be seen, not whether she's guilty, and that's the part I'm curious about.

What is You Can See Everything, and how did it get made?

The setup is simple to state and hard to believe. According to A24, Holmes invited a skeptical film crew to document her every move 34 days before she was sent to prison. The crew was Fielder, the comedian behind Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, and Oppenheim, and they kept filming for about three years. Deadline's review adds that Holmes hadn't given an interview in a decade, and that she and Evans opened their San Diego home with the understanding that nothing was off limits.

The project stayed largely secret for almost four years, per Yahoo. Then it surfaced as a surprise screening at Telluride on Sept. 6, and the New York Film Festival followed. The trailer A24 put out in September promises Fielder living with Holmes and questioning Evans, and it was Variety's trailer story that confirmed the Oct. 16 date.

Here's what the reviews keep saying it isn't. Variety's Gleiberman calls it nowhere near a pure documentary and says it never turns into an apology for Holmes. The question underneath, in his reading, isn't whether she's guilty. A jury settled that. It's what makes someone like her tick. The movie leans on stagecraft to get there: Fielder wrote out things Holmes has said, including from a phone call with her in prison, and had Seyfried perform them. Seyfried, who played Holmes in The Dropout, appears both as herself and in character.

Rolling Stone's take is sharper. Its reviewer says that by the time the family moves to Texas, the film has turned from an image-rehabilitation exercise into a portrait of several pathologies, with Holmes seeming unable to grasp that she did anything wrong. I'm reporting that as one critic's reading. I haven't seen the film.

Release date, runtime, rating and where to watch

Everything you need to plan the weekend, in one place:

You Can See Everything: The Basics

Details as reported through Oct. 14, 2026. Rotten Tomatoes scores move as reviews are added.
Detail	What we know	Source
Opens	What we knowFriday, Oct. 16, 2026, in theaters from A24. Reports differ on how wide the first weekend is.	SourceA24, Forbes, Yahoo
Directors	What we knowNathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim	SourceA24
Runtime	What we know174 minutes (2 hours 54 minutes)	SourceVariety, Deadline
Rating	What we knowR	SourceForbes
Premiere	What we knowSecret screening at the Telluride Film Festival on Sept. 6, then the New York Film Festival	SourceForbes, Rolling Stone
Critics score	What we know100% on Rotten Tomatoes before release; audience score and critics consensus still pending	SourceForbes
Streaming	What we knowNo date announced in anything I read	Source—

One small wrinkle. Deadline's review says filming started 36 days before Holmes reported, while A24's description and Forbes say 34. I'm using A24's number, since it comes from the distributor.

What are critics saying about You Can See Everything?

Forbes reported the 100% score on Monday, Oct. 12, from a few dozen reviews. The counts in the early reports didn't agree (22 in one, 37 in another), which is normal while reviews keep landing. A perfect score this early tells you critics who saw it at festivals loved it. It doesn't tell you what a Friday night audience will think, and the audience score is still pending. Here's how the biggest voices put it:

What the Early Reviews Say

Paraphrased from the Rotten Tomatoes summaries Forbes cited and from each outlet's review. Ratings are as the outlets gave them.
Outlet	Verdict	The point, in my words
Variety (Owen Gleiberman)	VerdictPositive	The point, in my wordsCalls it a one-of-a-kind psychodrama that feels like a hangout movie, driven by Fielder's sharp curiosity and real inquiry. Adds that it never excuses Holmes.
The Hollywood Reporter (Angie Han)	VerdictPositive	The point, in my wordsSays an intimate portrait of someone either deluded or disingenuous turns into something wilder and less predictable, until you wonder what a personal truth is worth.
The Daily Beast (Nick Schager)	VerdictRave	The point, in my wordsArgues it isn't just the film of the year but belongs with the best documentaries ever made.
Mashable (Kristy Puchko)	VerdictRave	The point, in my wordsReads it as a masterwork of interrogation, aimed at the Holmes saga and at documentary as a form.
The Guardian (Adrian Horton)	Verdict5 out of 5	The point, in my wordsEnjoys watching Fielder's pointed approach collide with Holmes's warm, guileless manner inside what the critic calls a reality distortion field.
Rolling Stone (David Fear)	VerdictRave	The point, in my wordsSays you may not know what you just saw, only that it's brilliant and unashamed about it.

What strikes me is how little they agree on what it is. One calls it a hangout movie, one an interrogation, one a psychodrama. When critics can't settle on a label but all land on "fresh," I take that as a good sign for a movie that's trying something.

Where does Elizabeth Holmes stand today?

Because the film is about someone real who's still in the system, it helps to have the facts straight. Holmes, now 42, was sentenced in November 2022 to 11 years and 3 months for defrauding investors in Theranos, her blood-testing company. Trial evidence showed its technology produced misleading results and that the company used conventional lab machines for tests its own devices couldn't reliably perform, per Yahoo's explainer. She wasn't convicted of defrauding patients, and jurors couldn't reach verdicts on three other investor-related counts.

The Holmes Timeline, Without the Noise

Dates come from the reporting linked below. The Bureau of Prisons declined to discuss the move, and dates can change.
When	What happened	Source
Nov. 2022	What happenedHolmes is sentenced to 11 years and 3 months for defrauding Theranos investors.	SourceABC News via WFTV
34 days before reporting	What happenedHolmes and her partner Billy Evans let Fielder and Oppenheim's crew start filming in their San Diego home.	SourceA24, Deadline
May 2023	What happenedShe reports to federal prison in Bryan, Texas.	SourceWFTV, Deadline
Sept. 6, 2026	What happenedThe film's secret Telluride screening.	SourceForbes
Sept. 22-23, 2026	What happenedA Bureau of Prisons letter and a Justice Department notice show an approved halfway-house placement.	SourceABC News via WFTV
Oct. 16, 2026	What happenedYou Can See Everything opens in theaters.	SourceA24
Aug. 23, 2027	What happenedScheduled move to the Austin Transitional Center in Del Valle, Texas.	SourceABC News via WFTV
Feb. 22, 2030	What happenedScheduled release date, per the same letter.	SourceABC News via WFTV

CNN reported that her sentence was reduced months ago, with the judge saying it doesn't diminish the enormity of her crimes. It also reported that Holmes asked President Trump for early release through a Justice Department request, and that the White House says it doesn't comment on clemency requests. The Bureau of Prisons declined to discuss the halfway-house move. The halfway-house and release dates come secondhand through ABC News, so treat them as scheduled, not guaranteed.

The Inventor, The Dropout or this one first?

This is where I wanted to give you something you can't get from a news recap. There are now three major screen versions of the Holmes story, and they don't do the same job. I put them in the order I'd give a friend who knows nothing about Theranos:

My Holmes Watch Order for a First-Timer

My own ordering, built from the scores and descriptions Forbes and the reviews give. I haven't seen the new film, and the order is about context, not quality.
Order	What it is	Critics score	Why I'd put it there
1. The Inventor (2019)	What it isHBO documentary by Alex Gibney	Critics score78% (60 reviews)	Why I'd put it thereIt lays out the scandal through reporters, whistleblowers and former employees, so you get the facts first.
2. The Dropout (2022)	What it isHulu limited series, drama	Critics score90%	Why I'd put it thereAmanda Seyfried won an Emmy for playing Holmes. It gives the story a face before you see the real one.
3. You Can See Everything (2026)	What it isA24 documentary, 174 minutes	Critics score100% (early)	Why I'd put it thereReviews describe it as asking what makes Holmes tick, not what she did, so it plays best if you already know.

The logic is simple. The first two build the world, and the new one, from every review I read, asks you to sit inside it. If you've already seen those, skip straight to the theater.

Box office: what to expect this weekend

Box office analyst Todd Thatcher predicts Street Fighter wins the weekend with about $28.5 million. He calls You Can See Everything the big question mark, because he hadn't seen a screen count. If it reaches high single-digit millions, he sees a potentially close fight for third with the second weekend of Other Mommy. A 174-minute R-rated documentary doesn't need to win; it needs people to talk about it. Our forecasts for the weekend's other new release are in the Street Fighter story linked below.

Is You Can See Everything worth seeing? My decision guide

Go this weekend if

You already know the Theranos story and you're curious about the person more than the plot. You've liked Fielder's work before. And you can give a movie almost three hours without checking your phone.

Wait if

You'd rather see what audiences say first. The catch is that I haven't seen a streaming date anywhere, so waiting has nothing to count down to.

Skip if

You want a straight, linear account of how the fraud worked. The reviews are clear that this is not that movie, and The Inventor already is.

174 MINMy Call Before Seeing It (Not a Review)

I'd buy the ticket. A 100% score isn't a guarantee, but the critics describing the film's central gamble are the ones I trust to be hard on a stunt. If you go, go with enough room in your evening that you aren't watching the clock, and go knowing the basic facts above.

Questions people keep searching about You Can See Everything

When does You Can See Everything come out?

It opens in theaters Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, from A24. Reports differ on whether the first weekend is a limited or nationwide release.

How long is You Can See Everything?

174 minutes, or 2 hours and 54 minutes, according to Variety and Deadline.

Is You Can See Everything rated R?

Yes. Forbes reports it's rated R.

What is the Rotten Tomatoes score for You Can See Everything?

100% from critics before release, per Forbes on Oct. 12. The audience score and critics consensus were still pending.

Who is in You Can See Everything?

Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans, with Christopher Abbott listed in the cast by Deadline. Amanda Seyfried appears as herself and in a role as Holmes, per Wikipedia and Variety.

Did Elizabeth Holmes take part in the documentary?

Yes. She and Evans invited the filmmakers in, according to A24, and she hadn't given an interview in about a decade, per Deadline. I haven't seen reporting on any financial or editorial arrangement.

Where can I watch You Can See Everything?

In theaters from Oct. 16. I haven't seen a streaming date or platform announced.

When does Elizabeth Holmes get out of prison?

Her scheduled release date is Feb. 22, 2030, per a Bureau of Prisons letter reported by ABC News. She's scheduled to move to a halfway house on Aug. 23, 2027.

Was Elizabeth Holmes convicted of defrauding patients?

No. Yahoo's explainer notes she wasn't convicted of defrauding Theranos patients. Her conviction was for defrauding investors.

Is there another documentary about Elizabeth Holmes?

Yes. Alex Gibney's The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley aired on HBO in 2019, and Forbes calls the new film the second documentary about her.

HOW WE REPORTED THIS

Independently reported and written for this story, using the linked reporting from Forbes, Deadline, Variety, Rolling Stone, Yahoo, ABC News via WFTV, CNN, A24 and others. This is an analysis and opinion piece, not a review: the author had not seen the film at publication. Review lines are paraphrased. Where sources disagree (Deadline's 36 days versus A24's 34, and the number of Rotten Tomatoes reviews), we say so. See our full editorial methodology for how we verify claims and separate fact from analysis.

The Take: Gustavo Henrique

I keep circling one fact: she asked. Nobody forced Holmes to open her door 34 days before prison. She and Evans went to A24 and wanted to be documented. I'm not going to guess what's in her head, and I'd be suspicious of any writer who says they know. But the choice itself is the most interesting thing about the whole project, more than any twist the reviews are carefully not spoiling.

What I like is the swing. It would've been easy to make a tidy rise-and-fall film that we'd all nod along to. Instead, according to the people who've seen it, Fielder and Oppenheim made something that won't sit still, where you can't tell who's performing for whom. After years of sequels, reboots and rereleases topping the charts, a three-hour, R-rated documentary getting rave reviews feels like good news for anyone who still wants movies to surprise them.

Here's the part that makes me a little uneasy, and I think it should. We're all about to buy tickets to spend nearly three hours with a woman who was convicted of defrauding investors, and part of the appeal is that she's charming on camera. The Guardian's critic singles out her guileless warmth, and I'm curious whether the film makes us feel that pull and then question it. I can't know until I see it, but I'd like to walk out a more careful viewer, not a more entertained one.

If you go this weekend, I'd love for you to go with a skeptical heart and an open mind at the same time. That's hard. It's also what the best movies ask of us.