The Social Reckoning Review: Aaron Sorkin's Facebook Follow-Up Film Falls Flat
by Chris Evangelista · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
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Before David Fincher's "The Social Network" hit theaters in 2010, the concept of a Facebook movie seemed laughable. Public opinion shifted rapidly, however, when that now-iconic teaser trailer for the film — one of the best of the decade, featuring a creepy-sounding cover of Radiohead's "Creep" — began making the rounds. By the time Fincher's film opened, it was fast on its way to becoming one of the most acclaimed films of the 21st century.
A lot of elements helped make "The Social Network" the modern classic we know it as today — Fincher's moody direction, the pitch-perfect cast, the mind-blowing score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. But most of all, there was Aaron Sorkin's crackerjack, Oscar-winning script, full of lines delivered with machine gun speed for maximum effect.
For years there's been talk of a follow-up film — not a bad idea, since so much more has happened in the social media hellscape since "The Social Network" opened in 2010. Now, that follow-up is here in the form of "The Social Reckoning," and the results are surprisingly lackluster and lifeless. Seemingly everything that went right with "The Social Network" goes wrong here, resulting in a forgettable, clunky film that is technically shorter than "The Social Network" but somehow feels twice as long.
The Social Reckoning makes a compelling story kind of boring
I don't want to spend too much time here comparing "Reckoning" to "Network," since they're meant to be two very different movies with very different aims. Still, you can't help but watch this new movie and be reminded that while Sorkin can produce a great screenplay, he really should stop directing his own work (Fincher did not return; he was busy making Netflix's "Cliff Booth" movie). But oddly enough, even Sorkin's script is lacking. There's no zest here; no energy. It's all so bland and flavorless.
It shouldn't be, either. Sorkin's script is a dramatized account of a real scandal, when Facebook employee Frances Haugen turned whistleblower and leaked damning info to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. Horwitz's story revealed that Mark Zuckerberg's billion-dollar social media empire tweaked its algorithm to push hate-speech and misinformation for profit. The story also confirmed that the powers that be at Facebook were well aware of the toxic effect its platforms were having on young people (and people of all ages, really).
Right away, Sorkin is running into a problem. He clearly wants "The Social Reckoning" to be an "All The President's Men"-ish crusade for truth and justice, but he can't overlook the fact that in the end, Zuckerberg and Facebook got away with it all. Sure, everyone got exposed, and yes, plenty of people filed lawsuits. But Zuckerberg is still obscenely wealthy and powerful, and while Facebook may have rebranded as Meta (although I don't think anyone actually calls it that, just like no one really calls Twitter "X"), the platform is still very much around, spewing disinformation. Shining a light on Facebook's misdeeds is important and necessary, but when all is said and done, the bad guys still won.
Mikey Madison is miscast, and Jeremy Allen White doesn't fare much better
A completely miscast Mikey Madison plays Frances Haugen, a data scientist who believes Facebook can be a force for good in the world. A socially awkward loner with medical problems, Frances keeps stating over and over again that she loves her job at Facebook. Unfortunately, she also has noticed that the platform seems to be radicalizing people towards hateful right-wing causes and spraying misinformation at an alarming rate. Unable to get anyone inside the company to listen to her, Frances decides to reach out to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White.
Horwitz is a luddite who doesn't even know how to use Facebook. He doesn't care about the tech. Instead, he's more interested in the outsized influence Facebook and social media has on our lives, and he thinks there's a story there. He's right, and soon he's working with Frances to expose Facebook's insidious nature. You get the sense that Sorkin wants to have a sort of playful "His Girl Friday" back-and-forth between Madison and White, but their characters are both so bland and unengaging that it never works.
Madison, so damn good in "Anora," feels completely wrong for this part, struggling with the pages and pages of information her character has to deliver. White, meanwhile, is too inherently intense to play a character who is supposed to have a dry sense of humor. The actors also have no chemistry together, which is a bummer, since they spend so many scenes talking, and talking, and talking.
Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg like a kind of emotionless husk
The narrative cuts back and forth in time as Horwitz tries to crack the story. Meanwhile, we keep checking in with Facebook's dark lord, Mark Zuckerberg, as he prepares to deliver a deposition in front of Congress. Jesse Eisenberg memorably played Zuckerberg in "The Social Network," but opted not to return here. That's not really a problem, since the Zuckerberg in "Network" was meant to still have a sliver of humanity, while the older Zuckerberg we see here has devolved into a kind of emotionless husk.
Jeremy Strong steps into the role, and while he does a great job channeling Zuckerberg's lifeless eyes and flat affect, the character borders on caricature. Sporting a terrible haircut and caked in makeup that makes him look like a living corpse, Strong's ghoulish Zuckerberg behaves like a creature who slithered out of a crypt to impersonate a tech bro. I don't have any problem with that, in theory, since I don't have anything good to say about the real Mark Zuckerberg. But Sorkin doesn't seem to know what he wants this version of Zuckerberg to be, since in the film's third act he gives him a sudden and brief crisis of conscience, which feels completely out of character based on everything we've seen so far.
That said, the Zuckerberg scenes are the only moments here that feel like they have any energy, bolstered by a game performance from Bill Burr as the only one of Zuckerberg's confidants urging him to do the right thing and stop contributing to the rapid downfall of society (needless to say, Zuckerberg has no interest in listening to these pleas, hiding behind the label of a "free-speech absolutist").
Sorkin gives into his worst impulses in The Social Reckoning
Sorkin's dialogue has always been his strength, but while "The Social Network" found a way to make one speech after another incredibly cinematic and even exciting, "The Social Reckoning" is weirdly listless. On top of that, Sorkin's direction is devoid of anything resembling style, and instead he gives us a glut of flat, uninspired shots of characters in non-descript hotel rooms looking at charts and graphs on laptop screens.
As "The Social Reckoning" lumbered along, I kept waiting for the film to find its footing; to hit its stride. I may not be a big fan of Sorkin the director, but I am a fan of Sorkin the writer, and at the very least, I expected his script to have some fire. But it's dull to the point of being somnambulatory, lacking the rhythm so many of his best scripts have. On top of that, Sorkin gives into some of his worst impulses — like a moment where Frances accuse Jeff of "mansplaining," at which point Jeff replies that "mansplaining" is something women accuse men of when they know they're losing an argument. Yeesh.
Alexandre Desplat's underwhelming, barely-there score certainly doesn't help matters, and while I said at the top that I didn't want to spend too much time comparing "The Social Reckoning" to "The Social Network," having Desplat's forgettable music take the place of Reznor and Ross' electric score from the previous film feels particularly egregious. Maybe if Reznor and Ross had returned the film would have some much-needed energy.
The Social Reckoning is ultimately a frustrating experience
"The Social Reckoning" is ultimately a frustrating experience. While recapturing the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of "The Social Network" probably wasn't ever going to be possible, there was a real opportunity here to make something solid. Facebook has been a ruinous experiment and its flaws have been well-documented. The problem is that Sorkin wants this film to be the empowering story of a brave whistleblower who exposed the truth to the world.
And yes, Frances Haugen deserves plenty of credit and praise for daring to come forward. But the true story is not exactly what I'd call "hopeful." Perhaps if Sorkin had dared to lean into the dark reality of it all instead of aiming for a Capra-esque feel-good story, the film would play better. But "The Social Reckoning" fails to make a case for itself. In the end, even the title is a misnomer — there was no real reckoning. Mark Zuckerberg never faced any real consequences. Facebook is still very much around, and your boomer parents are probably on there right now sharing AI-generated memes. As a society, we've failed to log off, and we probably never will.
/Film Rating: 4 out of 10
"The Social Reckoning" opens in theaters on October 9, 2026.