RECKON WITH THIS

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Aaron Sorkin returns to once again censure Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook with “The Social Reckoning.”

David Fincher’s incisive and riveting 2010 gem The Social Network—which won Aaron Sorkin an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay—told us everything we needed to know about bitter, petty, ruthless Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Yet given the platform’s every-expanding role in Americans’ day-to-day lives, it was almost inevitable that a follow-up would materialize.

Too bad it’s this one.

The Social Reckoning (October 9, in theaters), Sorkin’s recent-events drama about the Facebook Files, offers no further insight into the tech titan, instead attempting to channel films like All the President’s Men, Erin Brockovich, and The Insider to provide a feel-good fable about intrepid truth-tellers successfully fighting back against the company’s villainy.

Sorkin may have written this sequel, but given its shallow, one-note superfluousness—complete with Jeremy Strong poorly subbing in for Jesse Eisenberg as Zuckerberg—it’s a far cry from his prior achievement, and far less valuable than Luca Guadagnino’s kindred-spirit A.I. takedown Artificial.

The Social Reckoning is also directed by Sorkin, and Fincher’s absence is a not-insignificant loss for the feature. Gone is the sensually sleek, sinister energy of its predecessor, along with the propulsive, doom-laden momentum that turned it into a villain’s origin story.

Replacing Oscar-winning composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ ominous score with Alexandre Desplat’s clunky and hand-holding orchestral arrangements doesn’t help, further transforming the film—no matter the return of cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth—into an aesthetically unadventurous tale about a whistleblower and journalist partnering to reveal the deep, dark secrets powering Facebook’s corrosive reign.

In a prologue that will reverberate down the line, a young professional (Portia Doubleday) stands on the side of a busy road, her jeep overheating. When the police arrive, her snarkiness quickly devolves into racial ugliness and threats of violence. Posted on a right-wing Facebook page, the video of this encounter deeply troubles Facebook data engineer Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), who’s concerned that the site is radicalizing users via a tweaked algorithm that sends them to extremist groups.

She’s unsuccessful, however, in bringing this to the attention of her colleagues and superiors on the civic integrity team, even though the department’s entire purpose is to protect the interests of the platform’s consumers.

Meanwhile, journalist Jeff Horowitz (Jeremy Allen White) arrives in San Francisco and is promptly hired by The Wall Street Journal to investigate Facebook malfeasance, this despite his total cluelessness about tech (he can’t even use GPS to reach the office on time). Horowitz believes this is fundamentally a story about big-business nefariousness, and he sets about finding a source who’ll give him the inside scoop on Facebook’s bad behavior—which he initially suspects is limited to juicing the positive comments on its creator’s videos. He strikes gold with Haugen, who’s eager to finally have a receptive ear for her anxieties and tells him that things are actually far worse at the site she “loves.”

Sorkin’s trademark is snappy dialogue, often delivered at blistering speeds while characters briskly walk, yet The Social Reckoning features virtually none of that. Horowitz and Haugen’s conversations are curt and testy but lack spark, and though that has something to do with the writer/director’s conception of them as kindred socially awkward, no-nonsense, single-minded individuals—something that likens them to Zuckerberg—it’s also the byproduct of the action’s inherent flatness.

Once it’s clear (meaning, in the first 10 minutes) that Facebook is up to no good and these two are going to make a difference, there’s zero juice to the material, just a series of scenes in which everyone says what they think and, when push comes to shove, acts nobly in the face of tremendous risks and danger.

Madison’s potential whistleblower Haugen is slightly more developed than White’s crusader Horowitz, but The Social Reckoning undercuts her by repeatedly dressing the Anora Best Actress winner in skimpy outfits that she nominally uses as disguises (so it looks like she’s on dates rather than conspiring with the media) and Sorkin employs to highlight her cleavage.

Even so, both are more nuanced than Strong’s Zuckerberg, who’s largely confined to a studio where, with the aid of various assistants, he rehearses for an upcoming congressional hearing. With an adolescent boy’s haircut and a robotic demeanor, Strong’s villain resembles a creepy, emotionless doll come to life. As he repeatedly proclaims that Facebook has no responsibility to police the truth (such as with political campaign ads), he gets into squabbles with former colleague Charlie (Bill Burr), which lets Sorkin lay out the CEO’s stark moral failings.

Like his previous directorial effort, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Social Reckoning lets Sorkin indulge in his most preachy and melodramatic instincts. From Haugen asking Horowitz why a college basketball player is pumping his fist in celebration (she literally doesn’t get it because, “I’ve never been that happy”) to a colleague of hers nobly helping her cause due to rightful fears about Instagram awfulness, the film is designed to coddle and lecture in equal measure. Unfortunately, it’s totally uninterested in knowing its protagonists (they’re just archetypal devices), and worse, it’s as unfunny as it is conventionally plotted—a deadly combination that renders it a sermonizing slog.

By inflating Zuckerberg into a one-note boogeyman, The Social Reckoning exaggerates to the point of reduction, all while ignoring Facebook users’ own culpability in contributing to the online sphere’s toxicity. It’s a bland, basic liberal message movie that eschews complexity, and in its finale, it posits Facebook as the catalyst for the January 6 insurrection—a charge it delivers with all the subtlety of a rioter bludgeoning their way into the Capitol. Crosscutting between that chaos and Haugen’s gallant congressional testimony, Desplat’s music crescendoing to underline the inspirational argument, the film all but hammers its audience over the head with its perspective.

The fact that Haugen’s ordeal concludes with a moment of wannabe-rousing triumph is the last straw, laying bare Sorkin’s preference for phony uplift over the harsh reality that Facebook remains a manipulative vehicle for disinformation, discord, and division.

The Social Reckoning assuages viewers by making them think that the fight is over and the good guys won—an inexcusably misleading notion that a cynic might say is designed to let them feel OK, once the theater lights come up, about continuing to use the Meta products the film slams as destructive.

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Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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