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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
8
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Mar 21, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Holmes commands the screen as if it belongs to her. She surely must have known all along that it would. Much of the footage here is of the dog-and-pony variety, once commissioned by Theranos and designed to sell the con. But it's so high-gloss--so weirdly hypnotic--that neither Gibney nor "The Inventor" can get to the real human behind the image. A shortcoming of the film? Sure, but the only one. Must watch.
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ColliderFeb 27, 2019
Season 1 Review:
It’s hard to know her motives even though that’s what Gibney is eager to find. So we have to judge her by her actions, and those actions are deeply unflattering. ... Instead, The Inventor is at its best when it looks at how Holmes conned respectable figures who bought into her narrative rather than taking a hard look at the data.
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Feb 27, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Like a lot of Gibney’s work, The Inventor functions most reliably as a fast-paced, involving summary, one occasionally enlivened by the little, revealing bursts of personality he captures from his various talking heads. But as in his Assange doc, We Steal Secrets, Gibney can’t entirely compensate for the (admittedly understandable) void at the center of his portrait—which is to say, for the fact that he couldn’t land an interview with his main subject.
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RogerEbert.comFeb 27, 2019
Season 1 Review:
In his fervor to sell you on this story and to keep you interested, some filmmaking techniques tend toward corny, like his opening voiceover telling you that this is “a compelling story,” or tacky graphics that get in your face, like a pair of dice being thrown to illustrate a metaphor. And as for the curiosity, sometimes it leads on tangents, taking away from the tightness. ... But when “The Inventor” is running through the small downfall of Theranos, the whistleblowers and Holmes’ own detachment from reality, the documentary can be fascinating.
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Feb 27, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The Inventor ultimately can’t decide if it’s about the specific, contained absurdities of the Theranos scam, or the phenomenology of scams like Theranos. There’s certainly plenty of material to pore over on the former, but any attempts to go bigger-picture feel surface-level and abbreviated. ... But when Gibney stops to savor some of the specifics, the film is at its best.
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