Elizabeth Holmes documentary hailed a ‘masterpiece’ as it receives perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes

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Reviews have fallen for Nathan Fielder’s highly anticipated documentary about convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes ahead of its US premiere – and critics are calling it the ‘movie of the year’.

Directed by Fielder and Prime timeit’s Lance Oppenheim, You can see everything sees Holmes invite the filmmakers to her home just days before she was sent to prison, with filming taking place in secret for three years.

Holmes, 42, was convicted of fraud in 2022 after claiming her startup, Theranos, had developed a revolutionary medical device capable of diagnosing a range of conditions with just a few droplets of blood extracted from the tip of a finger. After misleading investors with technology that never worked, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison and began her sentence in a Texas facility in May 2023.

The film is set to be released in US theaters on October 16 and in the UK on November 20, with early reviews giving the film a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. On the review site Metacritic, the film received an equally high score of 97 and received the label “universally acclaimed”.

“Not just the film of the year, it’s a documentary that stands alongside the genre’s all-time greats,” The daily beast wrote in his review, while The guardian called it a “modern masterpiece of deception.”

“The hype is deserved,” the publication continues, adding that it is “somehow more shocking, more twisting, more prickly and revealing than expected – a stunning and gloriously unsettling hall of psychological mirrors.”

Others warned that viewers would leave this conceptually ambitious film with “no idea what they just saw.”

“You can see everything it’s about as far away from a “pure” documentary as possible.” Variety wrote. “It’s a one-of-a-kind reality TV psychodrama circus.”

Daily Screen praised the documentary for demonstrating “the fallacy of reality in art while recognizing that everyone – including the filmmakers, Holmes and (his partner Billy) Evans – distorts the truth for their own purposes.”

The criticism won’t come as a huge surprise to fans of Fielder, the deadpan comedian who is best known for creating absurdist projects, which are undermined by a sense of unease throughout. His HBO docu-comedy The repetitionfor example, blurred the line between reality and fiction.

He also created and starred in the satirical reality show Nathan for youplaying a fictional version of himself while trying to help small businesses by suggesting wacky strategies.

In September, You can see everything released a new trailer for the film, in which Holmes, unblinkingly, told Fielder: “I have nothing to deceive you about. Of course, I’m not deceiving you. I’m engaged with you as a human being. Why should I deceive you? I have no reason to do that.”

The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival that month, with attendees required to lock their phones in a pouch during the screening.

You can see everything comes out in the United States later this week.