The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, directed by Alex Gibney, is an intriguing documentary into the mind of an inventor and what it takes to go into the unknown, find something before it exists, recruit people to invest in it, and chase after it relentlessly. It is about believing in something that might be unbelievable, unprovable, or even undoable.
The film tells the story of Theranos, a multi-billion-dollar tech company, and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, who was celebrated as the youngest self-made female billionaire. That context matters because it shows how big the belief system became around her and the company.
By the second act, there are hints in interviews that maybe everything is not as it seems. Small cracks begin to show. The story starts to suggest that what we are being told and what is actually happening may not line up.
What I found interesting was that while this person was clearly flawed, the hunger of her followers to have a woman hero of Silicon Valley blinds them to reality. It becomes clear that identity starts to surpass competence or reality. As the science starts to come down, it becomes more and more clear that things are not as they seem, but at the core of the institution, that reality is being overlooked.
The capacity for humans to lie or manipulate reality and the lengths they will go to feels profound. It makes you wonder if geniuses are sometimes just people willing to lie to themselves so deeply that they no longer recognize it.
At its core, the film exposes the dangers of humans becoming hypnotized. We overlook things. We see what we want to see. In that space, we often want to believe something more than see it for what it is. I myself thought, maybe she can do it. Maybe she is a genius or maybe she is a sociopath?
The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley becomes less about technology and more about belief, identity, and how easily people can be pulled into a story that feels bigger than the truth.
