The movie is weird, the filmmaker is, and the subjects are pathological.
Nathan Fielder’s “You Can See Everything” is a bizarre non fiction film. And a hit.
Over the weekend, “YCSE” made a shocking $15 million in minimum release. Just 855 theaters. It’s the biggest opening weekend for a ‘documentary’ in two decades.
Among the oddities involved: a relatively famous young actress, Amanda Seyfried, is also featured but not advertised.
The movie is presented as a documentary, although it’s just actually sort of a reality film. It’s not a conventional documentary at all.
Fielder has a cult following from his unique HBO shows that mix fact with fiction. He’s done it again here, but this time it’s three hours long, and about two people — Elizabeth Holmes and her boyfriend Billy Evans — who are sociopaths at the very least.
Holmes is in prison now for bilking investors of hundreds of millions of dollars from her fake company, Theranos.
Word of mouth on the movie is strong since Fielder blends Holmes’s story with Seyfried re-creating her once she goes to jail. And the twist there is that Seyfried previously played Holmes in a miniseries — and won awards.
Seyfried in the second half of the movie is playing herself, Holmes, and herself playing Holmes.
Meantime, Evans — who comes off as a deeply concerning liar and and manipulator. As Fielder peels back the layers of mystery here, both Holmes and Evans seem like they can’t be real because they are so awful.
“YCSE” is almost like a snuff film. The audience actually leans forward in its seats as more and more alarming facts come to life. And even then you never know what is real.
The box office take is enormous. It’s the biggest non fiction movie since Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911” twenty two years ago.
Originally, studio A24 lowballed the estimate at $12 million. But now, with $15 mil called today, watch and see the real number go slightly higher tomorrow.
PS Seyfried revealed on the Academy Museum red carpet last night that Holmes — serving an 11 year sentence since 2023 — will be released to a halfway house this summer. In the movie, Holmes and Evans announce they’re going to try and do a Theranos 2.0, which is unbelievable since the first one was a total fiction.
