Director: Aaron Sorkin
Cast: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen
Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin
112 mins. Rated R for language.

Fuck Facebook. Seriously, fuck that company. Need I say more? Okay, I’ll say more…

Picking up with Facebook “creator” Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice) and his company in the years 2019-2021, The Social Reckoning is really the story of Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison, Anora), an employee of the company’s Civic Integrity Team who discovers that a large percentage of Facebook users who joined radical hate groups on the platform were directed to it because of Facebook’s algorithm. She wants to tell anyone who will listen, but no one does until she is enlisted by Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White, The Iron Claw) to share her concerns. Frances believes in Facebook and the good it can bring to the world, but she also doesn’t want to get sued or lose her job for breaking Non-Disclosure Agreements with her notoriously private job. As Jeff, a not-so-great-with-tech reporter, attempts to confirm the dangerous information, Zuckerberg has come under fire for Facebook’s role in misinformation since restructuring its algorithm.

Your reaction to The Social Reckoning may be based on what you most took away from The Social Network. If you were there for David Fincher’s stylistic direction and Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross’s singular score, you may find disappointment here. For me, the strengths of both films stem from Aaron Sorkin’s fabulous writing. His screenplay is damn good here, so while the style is lacking, the substance isn’t just more interesting than the first film, it’s IMPORTANT. So much has happened between films that catching up with this man and his company over a decade later is an oceanwide gap and makes the impact of The Social Reckoning much stronger and quite literally horrifying that we’ve ended up here. 43% of adults get their news from Facebook. Seriously. The facts and their presentation is what works so well here.

Sorkin’s directing is not flashy or anything (one of the ways in which this film feels distant from its predecessor), and he falls back on some choices that feel pulled out a 1990s courtroom drama (very reminiscent of the time period that gave us A Few Good Men and The West Wing), a few schmalzy choices, and a couple of moments of comedic dialogue that doesn’t work, but the performances show how much of a joy it is to read this man’s words.

Mikey Madison proves herself capable of a much stronger performance range than her most notable roles would tell you. Throughout Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Scream, and Anora, her work has always been big and vibrant, whereas Frances is small, brave but subtle, and she’s magnetic to watch as she pulls back the layers of these revelations and tries to purse out information that will allow her to do her job and help Facebook to be the company she believes it can be. She’s not on Horwitz’s side at the start, but as she uncovers more, she discovers that she may have to choose an allegiance between the secretive company and the truth-seekers of the world.

White matchers her energy quite nicely as the strangest fit for a Facebook reporter ever in anti-tech Jeff Horwitz. He doesn’t know how it works, which causes a need for him to consistently reach out to Frances for guidance and gives her all the power to seed information. White’s great at these types of characters and does well, but I appreciate that this isn’t his story; it’s hers.

The rest of the cast mostly fills supporting roles, including Strong’s much more chameleon take on Zuckerberg. I love that Strong isn’t trying to do Jesse Eisenberg doing Mark Zuckerberg, but he makes it his own. Bill Burr (Daddy’s Home) is an absolute delight here as a colleague-turned-combatant-turned ally to Zuckerberg who is trying to get him to understand the need for truth in the political advertising during the age of heightened political propaganda. Burr always surprised the hell out of me, and his work here reading Sorkin’s words is wonderful. Lastly, Billy Magnussen (No Time to Die) rarely gets the chance to shine, but as Teddy, the executive for media relations, he has this biting confidence that Facebook is its own government, it doesn’t need to answer to the US government or its people, and when that confidence begins to waver, he slows just the slightest cracking. It’s a more subtle piece of work than he’s been tasked with in the past, and he shines.

At the end of the day, do I believe that The Social Reckoning is a better film than The Social Network? No, but it also doesn’t have to be, and the belief that a “sequel,” whether spiritual or literal, has the requirement of being better than what came before, is often a foolish one. The Social Reckoning is missing that style of David Fincher, and Sorkin is a much more economic director, but the story is more impactful, and I think I like this cinematic follow-up more than the original, though I can’t promise that will be the case for everyone. Know whether you enjoy the first film’s style or substance more, and that’ll decide the whether this film is for you.

4/5
-Kyle A. Goethe