‘The Social Reckoning’ Review: All Talk, No Insight

The Social Reckoning follows Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), an engineer at Facebook, as she reaches out to Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), a Wall Street journalist, to secretly release information about unknown harm that Facebook is intentionally inflicting on their users. Taking place between two timelines, the film shows the two uncovering the truth and Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) in January 2021 dealing with the public image of Facebook. The film is a companion piece to 2010’s The Social Network, but doesn’t live up to its predecessor. Read our full review for The Social Reckoning below. 

The main draw of The Social Reckoning was the chance to see Jeremy Strong step into the role of Mark Zuckerberg. Let me just say he pulls it off. First off he does look insanely similar to Zuckerberg, there even being a shot where he looks so similar if you told me it was Zuckerberg I would have believed you. Strong does a great job capturing the extremely odd aura of Mark Zuckerberg. There is an inhuman, robotic, lizard like element to his performance that brings the person to life. I wish we got more of him, mostly more behind the curtain. All of the scenes with Strong are him in a room full of people and I wanted more variety in it.

The story focused most on Mikey Madison as Frances Haugen and Jeremy Allen White as Jeff Horwitz. Madison does an overall good job, but it is unfortunately a downgrade from her turn in Anora. There is really nothing bad or nothing extremely good I have to say. The same can also be said for White. They are both serviceable, but the film didn’t lean into any important trait hard enough for them to stand out. Jeff Horwitz should have experienced the harm of what Facebook is doing to journalism more and Frances Haugen should be showing how the internet can connect people who are socially awkward. Yet the movie is not interested in showing or diving deeper into those internal conflicts, because it thinks having a line in the screenplay is enough. 

The Social Reckoning was very confusing to me, because the topic itself is one of the most important of the 2020’s but the film says nothing new or interesting about it. This movie is about Facebook from 2019 to 2022, which is obviously only a few years away from where we are now. I fear the movie might have been made too early. It felt more like a boring historical reenactment than a movie about these people and their motives. If you know the events that this film is covering then you will not gain any new perspective or revelation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Aaron Sorkin made this as one last punch to Mark Zuckerberg, which I can’t blame him for, but at least make an entertaining movie in the meantime. To make a movie about such a pivotal moment in history so incredibly uninteresting is enough for me to sentence Sorkin to director’s jail. Sorkin is a talented writer, no one can argue that, but based on his four directorial outings it is evident that he needs to leave the directors chair alone. 

I also would be remiss to not mention the Oppenheimer-esk black and white scenes depicting the past, the past being like three years before when the film takes place. It is, first off, an ugly choice because it isn’t lit well and it is a misguided choice because there are already two timelines; adding a third in black and white doesn’t hold any meaning. This is the perfect example of how bad Aaron Sorkin is as a director. That, and the many timeline checks superimposed on screen to tell us the difference between the two timelines. Yet, this might shock Sorkin, but the audience is actually smart enough to remember two timelines without you showing the difference countless times. My eyes rolled into places they have never gone every time a character would say, “Wait, explain that one more time.” Do you think we are stupid, Sorkin? Do you respect the audience at all? This movie is talking down at the audience at every turn, but isn’t even brave enough to name-drop Donald Trump.

If I had to describe this movie in one word, it would be pathetic. This especially hurts because of its connection to The Social Network, a smart, complex film that has solidified itself as one of the most important movies of its time. Go rewatch The Social Network and save your money on this one. 

The Social Reckoning is written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, and Billy Magnussen. The film was released on October 9.