Nothing can prepare you for this portrait of a woman with a fading sense of reality.

Nathan Fielder has explored the balance of his position as a comedian against his desire to tackle real issues before. In the second season of The Rehearsal, he explored what it meant to be a clown who asks people to take him seriously about his plan to reduce plane crashes. This conversation rolls over into his documentary, You Can See Everything, where what feels like a joke turns into a terrifying exploration of a complex subject. One that left my audience nervously gasping the entire back half.

Fielder (who co-directed with Lance Oppenheim of this year’s Primetime) is known for his comedy, and by placing himself in front of the camera here, he sets an early expectation. Fielder is seen lurking in the background of important moments in the life of Elizabeth Holmes, looking like a bad photoshop meme that’s somehow based entirely in reality. It’s funny. But Fielder is also known for asking questions and drilling into answers, not letting people off the hook and forcing them to sit in their discomfort. It’s played for a laugh at the start, as he lingers in the home of Holmes and her partner, Billy Evans, asking them about whisking eggs and ducking behind them in headphones during their calls with lawyers. It becomes jarring when he is cross-examining Holmes and Evans on their fluffy statements that seem to sidestep being direct– something untenable for the type of inquisitor Fielder is.

For those not in the know, the subject of this expansive documentary is Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced CEO of the defunct Theranos who was accused and convicted of defrauding investors with a blood test machine that didn’t work. The documentary begins with weeks until Holmes (“Liz,” as she’s called by those in her circle, which includes Fielder) is to surrender herself to prison. She continues to maintain her innocence. So does Billy.

Holmes didn’t just become a pop culture icon because of Theranos, but also because of her odd manner. She seems to have adopted a more masculine voice, a strange cadence, and blinks in time enough that it makes her seem uncanny. I used to wonder how she went so long without blinking, but I don’t think I blinked for the entire almost three-hour runtime of this. She is an immovable object to Fielder’s unstoppable force, and their dynamic takes the movie places no one will see coming.

As a scholar of the human condition, Fielder meets his match against the alien-like Holmes. He tries every way to connect with her and to understand how she could possibly maintain her innocence, forcing her to analyze an Abbott and Costello routine and asking her if she understands how people perceive her. He becomes a monkey in the middle between Evans and Holmes who volley between Holmes trying to explain herself, and Evans trying to explain it for her. If Fielder is Willy Wonka, and Holmes is The Wizard of Oz, it’s challenging to parse who is the mastermind of this project and who is the mark. Is it Billy? Is it the audience?

Listening to Holmes and Evans trade corporate mumbo-jumbo is like listening to a Jabberwocky presentation and makes it hard to know what they even believe. But Nathan is set on finding out, even if he gets confused by his own allegiances and opinions in the process. Remember when Nathan got a pilot to not just admit, but boast, on television about how and why he was banned from most dating apps? Wait until you see the number he does on Evans.

It’s baffling to see how effectively Fielder plops his approach to exploring humanity in what feels like a marked departure from his usual subject matter. But then, maybe he doesn’t have a “usual.” It’s easy to want this to fit alongside Fielder’s other comedic work, and it does. It uses a lot of his signature obsessive reenactments and demands for to-the-letter accuracy that confuse the importance of words versus intent. But the event harkens more to The Jinx where a subject is narcissistic and self-assured enough to think they can dupe an entire documentary film crew even while providing unbridled access to their life. I don’t know that we’ll ever get another “killed them all of course” hot mic confession, but the back-half focus on Evans comes pretty close.

The directing duo, along with cinematographer David Bolen (who also worked on Primetime) use a claustrophobic 4:3 ratio and a lot of close ups to create something not just punishing but inquiring. For “characters” known for trying to weaponize their own facial expressions, the tiny and detailed close shots force the audience to act like human lie detectors as tears stream down Holmes’ face at confusing times.

The central question morphs throughout the extended runtime to explore the earnestness of “Liz” and her attempts to clear her name. An unlikely conspirator joins Nathan who, herself, seems to bounce between wanting to protect the subject to wanting to trap her in her lies. Is Holmes deluded and controlled or deceptive and manipulative? It’s a question the film, for all its grand attempts, itself cannot answer.

Nathan secretly got his pilot’s license and casually flew commercial planes. Somehow this was an even bigger secretive stunt. Fielder and Oppenheim found an unbelievable subject and used her (and her cohorts) to explore authenticity, manipulation, and the practice of documentary filmmaking itself. For someone whose sincerity is often questioned in his work, Fielder has crafted a surprisingly sincere exploration of a subject he seems to want to call out and simultaneously protect.

Fielder’s way of interrogating people until he gets the whole answer will make you want to cross examine every accused– even if the “asked and answered” objection would flood the courtroom. It’s like they say: you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.

You Can See Everything hits theaters October 16, 2026.