Let’s face it, a sequel or spiritual successor to a film like The Social Network was always going to be a tall order as it’s arguably one of the defining features of the 21st century. However, the room for The Social Reckoning to grow as its own dissection of Facebook’s growth within an over 16 year gap in time is fairly self explanatory. The predatory tactics of greed and methods to gain engagement on both that app and social media in general have changed for the worse since Facebook’s birth. Outrage and misinformation is now a full on farming machine and Zuckerberg himself continues to lose every shred of benevolence that’s humanly possible.
There is more than enough insidious practices and brainwashing to delve into and writer/director Aaron Sorkin is more than aware of it, so it’s all the more disappointing that The Social Reckoning is frustratingly inert in nearly all its endeavors. It’s a disservice to do full comparison to every aspect of the first film especially with a sequel in a completely different technological era, but even from the basis of your classic journalism thriller perspective Sorkin rarely finds a captivating way to present what’s been well known material for years now.
Sharp framing and direction alongside a crackling screenplay is now replaced with the most tedious use of the medium visually and a script that lectures straight to your face through over-wrought dialogue that never finds deeper meaning. The Social Reckoning might be informative to those who’ve stuck their heads in the sand for the past half a decade of life, but to anyone else it’s a reckoning that’s far too late and brittle to leave any impact like its predecessor.
The film takes place within the years 2019-2021, following real life events of the time and the the Wall Street Journal expose articles released about Facebook’s insidious changes to the algorithm to drive engagement. Investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) is in charge of heading the investigations on tech reporting with interns in tow, but his lack of background in the realm of social media has him struggling for a lead until he meets current Facebook employee at the time Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).
Frances, despite her still retaining a core belief of Facebook being a platform that can connect people in various ways, starts having concerns once she witnesses her friend go full right–wing extremist during an altercation with law enforcement online. She decides to uncover within her own job the answers to her friend’s radicalization, and it turns out Facebook is directly responsible thanks to a change in the algorithm directly from Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) himself (that we see through flashbacks). With no one on the company willing to listen to her concerns, she seeks out Jeff to aid her in potentially furthering his investigation and this eventually spirals into a dissection of the horrifying tech practices that inevitably lead to the release of “The Facebook Files.”
Structure is maybe a more minute detail of what people identity when they point to the positives of the original Social Network, but that film’s framing device of bouncing back between Zuckerberg’s two depositions during the present and the growth of the platform and the tech mogul ghoulishness creates a thrilling sense of rhythm that never loses a beat in the edit. The Social Reckoning takes a different approach as a spiritual successor attempting to invoke more of an old fashioned journalism thriller feel that uncovers shocking revelations like All The President’s Men. It is somewhat admirable but consistently futile as the filmmaking aesthetics are similar to that of a slide show lecture in both presentation and word for word dialogue. The Social Reckoning’s back and forth flipping from past to previous events via part separation simply don’t have the flourishes to invigorate you in the slightest in its attempt to thrill over such engaging material, and it doesn’t help that Sorkin’s direction couldn’t be shallower.
The debate of director Aaron Sorkin versus screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has raged on for a long while as many have questioned his style as being much more ill fitted for his frequently more spotty direction. Well look no further than The Social Reckoning to subside this dilemma as it features the filmmakers most frustrating direction and writing sensibilities.
Most sequences between characters are shot with a heavy emphasis on shallow focus in nearly every shot that gives the film such a drab vibe dragging down its pace throughout. The snappy and analogy filled dialogue that Sorkin is highly regarded for is also fairly laughable here. Sorkin’s famed analogies always come across as trying too hard to give the word play some juice that’s more often than not shoehorned in. It can range from the occasional soliloquy about Jeff being really into Frank Capra or extended dialogue that essentially yells at us about the problems we face but doesn’t have the insight to dig any deeper to its topics or justify its existence.
At the very least most of the performances are serviceable here and even with bits of banter between Jeff and Frances being the most eye roll worthy, Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White are solid enough to carry enough presence throughout their endeavors. The same cannot be said, however, about Strong’s performance as Zuckerberg who is about as much of a cartoonish caricature as you could imagine.
Many moments throughout the fake congressional hearing Zuckerberg holds with his team lean towards an SNL sketch vibe. The obvious argument to be had is that real life Zuckerberg is so detached from reality that it’s only fair to push his infamous persona to the extreme (which is true) but the performance often undercuts any moment where the film’s dramatic stakes begin to increase, especially towards the film’s third act.
What’s most glaring about The Social Reckoning’s existence is ultimately how it only scratches the surface of the ever increasing radicalization of social media. The Social Network arrived at the perfect point in time to touch upon what that era of the internet age felt like and the dark path of destruction self absorptions would have us heading towards, Reckoning is years behind the curve in comparison. The occasional sliver of fascinating complexities like the admittedly effective opening scene where we first hand witness the far gone extremisms of Frances’ colleague or Sorkin touching on the January 6th insurrection of the capital, but more often than not the conversions only pay lip service to these matters that leave you empty by its end.
It’s not a matter of whether or not The Social Reckoning should exist as the current hell scape of deteriorating mental health from modern social media algorithms to keep people scrolling more than justifies more exploration, but its rather of question of if the quality does such a concept justice as a spiritual successor and in this film’s case it unfortunately doesn’t. The Social Reckoning is a frictionless attempt at a journalist thriller where the shot compositions fall as flat as the dialogue but most egregiously, it’s a supposed reckoning that is far too little and even more late.
