This review contains spoilers for the film You Can See Everything.
When audiences sit down to watch You Can See Everything, the new documentary chronicling the final weeks of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes before she reports to federal prison, they are stepping into a cinematic labyrinth. Co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, the nearly three-hour film is a winding, twisting experience that leaves viewers questioning their own perceptions of reality. To describe the project to someone unfamiliar with its layers of context is a formidable task, bridging Fielder’s Dadaist, boundaryless approach to documentary subjects with Holmes’s hypnotic affect. Is her demeanor the result of highly effective gaslighting, or is it a blinding, self-deluded earnestness? Hours after the credits roll, that central question remains entirely unresolved.
The documentary brings together a roster of unreliable narrators, chief among them Holmes herself and her partner, Billy Evans. Throughout the film, Evans’s on-camera persona shifts dramatically from a protective, naive tech bro into an unscrupulous grifter. When these figures are placed under a microscope and subjected to Fielder’s unconventional investigative gaze, the truth does not simply hide—it drifts further and further out of reach. Watching the film feels akin to staring at a Magic Eye image, where viewers slightly cross their eyes, desperate to make out a hidden three-dimensional subject that never quite comes into focus, eventually leaving them worried their vision might remain permanently altered.
While the broader discourse surrounding the film is already expansive, examining the grand themes of corporate fraud, culpability, and media manipulation, some of the most telling insights emerge from the most mundane moments. Specifically, we need to talk about the eggs.
For those familiar with the hallmarks of Fielderian programming, it is well-known that the comedian and filmmaker is prone to hyperfixating on seemingly minor details that eventually return to completely upend audience expectations. In You Can See Everything, one such detail unfolds during an unremarkable exchange between Holmes and Evans as they prepare breakfast together in their rental home. How much deep psychological truth can genuinely be gleaned from watching someone crack and scramble eggs? As it turns out, a remarkable amount.
In the first half of the film, Fielder is fully embedded in the domestic space of Holmes and Evans. The couple has inexplicably invited the documentary crew to document the final, high-stakes weeks leading up to Holmes’s imprisonment. The rationale behind this agreement remains incomprehensible, especially given any prior familiarity with Fielder’s distinct brand of psychological provocation. During these domestic sequences, the narrative takes a surprisingly sympathetic turn toward Holmes. She appears intensely focused on convincing the filmmakers—and Fielder specifically—that she is not a Machiavellian con woman who intentionally defrauded investors, but rather a sweet, deeply misunderstood victim of circumstance.
At times, aspects of this carefully cultivated narrative feel surprisingly convincing. Viewers are invited to witness her ostensibly less guarded moments, including a scene in the kitchen where she attempts to make breakfast alongside Evans. As Fielder conducts an interview, Holmes somewhat unenthusiastically and limply beats a bowl of eggs with a fork. The camera lingers on her feeble, uninspired whisking technique. Then, after a few seconds of awkward motion, a second set of hands enters the frame: those of Billy Evans. Without offering a single word of warning, he takes the bowl and fork directly out of Holmes’s hands and begins whipping the mixture with considerably greater speed and fervor.
Backseat driving in the kitchen is hardly an uncommon occurrence among domestic partners, though it is frequently a fast track to minor bickerings. Earlier in the documentary, Evans insists to Fielder that he and Holmes "never fight," while Holmes is similarly emphatic that she has never lied in her entire life—statements that reinforce their status as deeply unreliable narrators. However, what is far less common, and generally considered quite rude and aggressive, is physically grabbing a utensil and an ongoing task out of a partner’s hands mid-action to take over completely. Fielder is quick to point this out, pressing Evans on why he felt compelled to usurp the task. Holmes casually explains that Evans simply dislikes the way she mixes them and firmly believes he can do it better.
It is a tiny, fleeting interaction, but it is also remarkably revealing. Evans feels entirely comfortable taking control of an activity Holmes is performing, dispensing with basic polite communication, and appearing largely oblivious to how his domineering behavior might read on camera. Holmes, meanwhile, seems entirely accustomed to this sort of domestic intrusion, offering a casual explanation rather than an objection or a flash of annoyance. While beating eggs is certainly not one of Ms. Holmes’s notable strong suits—traditionally requiring vigorous motion to properly aerate the mixture for a fluffy scramble—the dynamic of the takeover speaks volumes.
Yet, viewing this interaction through the lens of Elizabeth Holmes requires asking a deeper question: Could this be a calculated case of weaponized incompetence? Is it possible that Holmes, wishing to avoid the manual labor of beating the eggs, intentionally performed the task poorly so that Evans would feel compelled to step in and take over? Is she truly being dominated, or is she brilliantly engineering a way to get someone else to do her work for her? Alternatively, could this simply be further evidence of her idiosyncratic way of thinking, reflecting a genuine lack of awareness regarding the socially accepted method of beating eggs?
Throughout the interviews featured in the film, Holmes paints the Theranos years as a period during which she was heavily manipulated by her former boyfriend and business partner, Sunny Balwani. She maintains that her ultimate intentions were noble and designed to benefit humanity, regardless of the devastating consequences for investors and patients who received dangerously unreliable test results. Whether she genuinely believes this revisionist history or simply possesses an elite salesmanship that allows her to sell any narrative remains one of the documentary’s central mysteries. It parallels ongoing questions about the extent to which her romantic partnerships consistently lead her to shoulder the blame for the actions of worse men in her orbit.
These unsettling questions reverberate with renewed force in the second half of the documentary. Following Holmes’s departure for prison, the film reveals troubling developments regarding Evans. He retains power of attorney over Holmes and has been utilizing her official X account to publish bizarre, profanity-laced remarks that bear no resemblance to her actual speaking voice or public demeanor. In this starkly different light, the early kitchen scene involving the eggs suddenly looks less like an isolated domestic quirk and far more like an early indicator that Evans is significantly more domineering than the protective-partner persona he initially projected. While his ostensible vigilance toward Holmes may be authentic on some psychological level, it is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with his willingness to license her image for billboards promoting another bizarre entrepreneur’s Theranos-themed fixation. Furthermore, it sits uneasily alongside his apparent acceptance of the possibility that her AI-generated likeness could be exploited for content entirely antithetical to her personal interests.
Even as Evans emerges as an increasingly unsavory and confounding character, Holmes herself remains frustratingly inscrutable. Does she have any awareness of what he is doing in her absence? Does she actively approve of these maneuvers? Is he ruthlessly exploiting her vulnerable circumstances for his own ends, or are the two of them working in tandem toward a shared objective—whether reputational, financial, or otherwise? The film offers a kaleidoscopic array of evidence supporting competing interpretations, including the unsettling possibility that even if Holmes is being subjugated, she may find herself genuinely content within that dynamic.
What makes Fielder and Oppenheim’s documentary so extraordinary is its optical-illusion-like layers of constructed truth. Despite the film featuring harrowing close-ups of microexpressions and intense scrutiny, there is a vast chasm between what Holmes and Evans say aloud, what they actually do, what they have done in the past, and what they plan to do next, such as allegedly launching a Theranos 2.0 venture under the name Haemanthus. Running parallel to all of this is Fielder’s own established history as a provocateur and faux-earnest performance artist who will go to extraordinary lengths to actualize a conceptual framework, all while maintaining a stone-cold straight face through the most absurd scenarios.
Knowing Fielder’s body of work inevitably forces viewers to question his own sincerity as well. At several points during the film, audiences are left wondering whether there is a palpable, lingering sexual chemistry between him and Holmes, and whether Fielder might actually act on it. If he were to cross that boundary, it remains entirely ambiguous whether such an action would stem from genuine human impulse or serve as another layer of complex performance art, raising the question of whether any meaningful barrier between those categories even exists for him.
Ultimately, the film’s most revealing moments are those that feel entirely off-script for every participant involved: a fleeting micro-expression, an odd word choice dropped into an otherwise emphatic statement, or a series of tense gestures exchanged across a kitchen island over a bowl of eggs. The subjects have willingly invited themselves to be watched, yet there are rare instances where they seem to momentarily forget the cameras are rolling. Those fleeting lapses offer the closest thing to genuine insight into their reality. Yet, the overall picture remains persistently murky, which appears to be both the central point and the wry irony embedded in the film’s title.
You Can See Everything elevates Nathan Fielder’s artistic reputation far beyond his established status as a master of cringe humor, introducing a distinct glimmer of genius. The project feels almost fateful in its ability to showcase his unique gifts, illuminating the bottomless strangeness and infinite complexities of human interaction. Even when dealing with grand, epoch-defining ideas of corporate malfeasance and public downfall, the documentary reminds us that it is the smallest, most overlooked details that matter the most. In a film that explicitly promises viewers they will see everything, the ultimate lesson is that true understanding requires looking much closer—and realizing that what we think we see may shift entirely when viewed in a different light.
