OVERVIEW
The Social Reckoning is a sequel-ish (more on that later) to David Fincher’s The Social Network, moving from that film’s sharp and propulsive character drama to a more sober and conventional investigative thriller. More than a decade has passed, and Zuckerberg’s company has grown far beyond its college-days beginnings into a multibillion-dollar empire with billions of users. Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz begins investigating whether the platform might be influencing politics and reaches out to countless employees. The only one who responds is data scientist Frances Haugen, who is increasingly bothered by the company’s ethics and starts handing him internal information showing that Facebook’s problems go far beyond what Horwitz suspected.
BACKGROUND
Aaron Sorkin started working on the film as a direct sequel to the 2010 masterpiece, initially hoping to bring back both director David Fincher and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, neither of whom ultimately returned. It is hard to say how much either decision had to do with the quality of Sorkin’s script, but what has been reported is that Fincher was unavailable because of his commitments with Netflix, while Eisenberg said he no longer wanted to be associated with the evil billionaire. Sorkin then took the director’s chair himself, marking his fourth film as both writer and director, with Jeremy Strong cast as Zuckerberg. Those changes eventually led Sorkin and Sony to describe the film as a “spiritual companion” to The Social Network, using that connection when convenient, including the title and poster style, while also distancing the film from direct comparison.
THE REVIEW
The comparison is inevitable, but reducing the film’s problems to that comparison would be far too generous. The Social Network has more style and depth in almost any two-minute scene than The Social Reckoning manages across its entire runtime. It turned a remarkable real story into a rich character study, grounding Zuckerberg’s ambition and insecurities in very recognizable emotions. The Social Reckoning mostly does the opposite, reducing an arguably more urgent story to a dry retelling of facts. It wants to inform, but is so dull and superficial that it rarely offers more than a decent article could.
That starts with Sorkin’s screenplay, and no director, Fincher included, could have savaged it. It opens with a promising scene in which a drunken woman films herself throwing racist slurs at police officers who, for a while, can do nothing about them. It is the film’s sole glimpse of Sorkin’s knack for creating individual set pieces that slowly grow in tension while connecting to larger themes. After that, he seems strangely uninterested in the subject, choosing instead to retell the events from the least interesting angle possible.
A huge portion of the film centers on Frances and Jeff, two one-dimensional characters who begin with their convictions already established and remain stuck in the same repetitive dynamic. They meet, Frances says she likes her job and believes in Facebook’s mission, mocks Jeff’s inability to understand technology, reveals another piece of information, and announces this will be the last time they speak. Then they do it again. And again. Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White are completely unengaging within that thin characterization. She becomes an exposition machine while he mostly acts confused and mildly annoyed. Even the conflict around them goes nowhere. Frances has a coworker who grows suspicious, Jeff talks about journalism’s decline, but Facebook remains largely unaware of their meetings until it is too late. No one feels watched, pursued, or even particularly pressured, despite Sorkin trying to enforce that through his direction.
The film alternates these meetings with Mark Zuckerberg rehearsing for his congressional testimony, scenes that are equally repetitive and occasionally saddled with painfully weak humor, like the running bit about his assistants trying to find the right tie. The one exception comes in a confrontation between Zuckerberg and Bill Burr’s Charlie, one of his former advisers. Burr gives the film’s best performance, briefly capturing some of the complexity and tragedy that the rest of the film is missing. Jeremy Strong’s Zuckerberg resembles Kendall Roy a little too much, particularly in his robotic physicality, while Sorkin abandons most of the insecurities that made the character fascinating before and reduces him largely to wanting Facebook to grow. But why? Is growth itself the goal, or does being number one still satisfy some deeper insecurity? Is it control, validation, ideology, or simply an inability to imagine Facebook becoming smaller? Or does he want a bigger mansion? The film is not interested in any of it.
With so little changing from scene to scene, the film feels slow, and its muted style does not help. Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, who also shot The Social Network for Fincher, returns here, but the result could not be more different, trading that film’s perfect mix of cold precision and wild unpredictability for a boring, TV-like aesthetic. The few moments that attempt something more ambitious, like the march forming in the third act, feel awkward and out of place. Alexandre Desplat’s score is equally lackluster, following the unpredictable, dynamic sound that won Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross an Oscar for The Social Network for a more conventional thriller score, filled with electronic pulses and tense strings immediately recognizable from Desplat’s previous work. He closes the film with a piece that reaches for the rousing quality John Williams brought to films like Lincoln and The Post, but inviting that comparison does him about as many favors as comparing Sorkin’s direction to Fincher’s.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Following one of the most dynamic biographical dramas ever made with one of the dullest would be frustrating enough, but The Social Reckoning is a failure even without the comparison. It takes an urgent real-life story and tells it from the least interesting angle, remaining strangely incurious about both the events and the people involved. The main story has little character development and almost no tension, while the real events are retold without ever being properly dissected. You walk away informed about the Facebook Files, assuming you didn’t already know about them, but you can learn that from an article. A film like this should make us understand these people: why an employee can recognize the harm and still stay, how the company silences criticism and maintains that culture, and what truly drove Zuckerberg to keep expanding a system causing so much damage. Like the Jeremy Strong poster used to market it, The Social Reckoning is sterile and dramatically inert.
- 1Everytime
- 2Hadestown: The Musical
- 3Tuner
- 4Minotaur
- 5The Weight
- 185The Social Reckoning#185 of 210
- Where to watch
- New In Theaters
- Where to watch
- Coming soonOct 22, 2026
Play trailer
- Original title
- The Social Reckoning
- Director
- Aaron Sorkin
- Cast
- Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Bill Burr, Gbenga Akinnagbe
- Rated
- R
- Screenwriter
- Aaron Sorkin
- Composer
- Alexandre Desplat
- Cinematography
- Jeff Cronenweth
- Editor
- Alan Baumgarten
- Country
- Language
- English