Amanda Seyfried steps back into Elizabeth Holmes for surprise documentary You Can See Everything

Amanda Seyfried is playing Elizabeth Holmes again, this time inside a documentary about the real Elizabeth Holmes.

The film is You Can See Everything, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, and it is now playing in theatres, according to Variety. It follows Holmes across the 34 days before she began an 11-year prison sentence over the collapse of Theranos, her blood-testing company.

Holmes gave the filmmakers total access during that period, according to Deadline. The title comes from her promise to the team that they could see everything, according to WBUR. A24, which is releasing the film theatrically, lists the runtime at 2 hours 55 minutes and set its cinema opening for October 16, according to A24.

Seyfried knows this story well. She played Theranos founder Holmes in Hulu’s 2022 series The Dropout and won an Emmy for the role. In the new film, Fielder shows Holmes and her boyfriend Billy Evans episodes of The Dropout for the first time.

That viewing sparks the film’s sharpest turn. After Holmes is incarcerated, Seyfried appears halfway through as herself and then stays on. She reenacts real-life moments the directors could not capture on camera, with Christopher Abbott playing Evans in those scenes. Seyfried becomes a main character of the final half.

One reenactment restages a private pre-filming negotiation between Fielder, Oppenheim and the A24 team. In that scene, Abbott as Evans demands payment for taking part in the documentary while Seyfried as Holmes leaves the room to tend to her child. Fielder and Oppenheim argue that paying the couple would discredit the film, but A24 agrees to pay them.

The film then returns to real life to pick up the thread. In a prison visit, Holmes tells Fielder she did not know about the payment. At the end of the film, it is revealed that Evans dropped his financial request.

What makes this stand out is the loop it builds. Actor watches subject, subject watches actor, then actor replays the making of the film itself.

Early response has been strong. You Can See Everything earned a 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, according to Forbes. Variety has described the surprise film as a tangle of reality, performance, greed, deception and mental illness.