The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley details the rise and fall of Theranos, the much hyped and ballyhooed company that claimed to have created a revolutionary method for testing blood – with the film specifically detailing the exploits of its controversial (and very young) founder, Elizabeth Holmes. Filmmaker Alex Gibney delivers a sporadically interesting yet mostly underwhelming documentary that feels like it’s missing huge chunks of the story, as the director makes the somewhat head-scratching choice to skip over certain seemingly important events – with the absence of such moments ensuring that the picture suffers from an often disastrous lack of context. (It’s impossible not to wonder, for example, how Holmes initially got started with Theranos or where the idea came from or how she managed to raise billions of dollars.) It’s clear, then, that The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley improves drastically in its second half, as Gibney charts the massive fraud perpetuated by Holmes and her various associates to admittedly engrossing effect. The end result is a barely-passable piece of work that ultimately would’ve worked better as a segment on 60 Minutes, as Gibney proves unable to justify the ludicrously overlong running time and the movie could’ve, in fact, benefited from a seriously judicious pass through the editing bay.

**1/2 out of ****

1 Comment

  1. Your review isn’t glowing, but you didn’t give it a “splat” on rotten tomatoes. Why? You haven’t said enough in this review to explain that.

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