Tonight's Movie: The Social Reckoning (2026)

Close to 16 years ago I reviewed THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010), about the founding of Facebook.

I found THE SOCIAL NETWORK absorbing, if unmoving, and I felt much the same when I returned to it for a fresh watch last week. It plays like a nerdy DALLAS, with no one particularly sympathetic.

The impetus for my rewatch of THE SOCIAL NETWORK was the new film THE SOCIAL RECKONING (2026), which revisits Facebook 16 years on.

Like the original film, THE SOCIAL RECKONING was written by Aaron Sorkin; this time around he also directed. The previous film was directed by David Fincher.

I saw THE SOCIAL RECKONING "cold," so I had little idea what the specific subject matter would be, and it was initially hard to get a foothold on where the movie was going due to the nonlinear storytelling.

Gradually the plot sharpens into focus: An unhappy young Facebook employee, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), doesn't like the way the company's algorithms are driving "extremism," so she eventually leaks information on the issue to a Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).

Over time, and in violation of her nondisclosure agreement with her employer, Frances leaks more and more documentation to Horwitz, who writes a series of articles on Facebook's algorithms. 

Simultaneously there are internal debates between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) and his ex-colleague Charlie (Bill Burr) about censorship, with Zuckerberg an advocate for free speech and Charlie coming down on the side of "fact checking," meaning censoring what's allowed to be published on the site.

Frances ultimately evades legal prosecution by claiming whistleblower status and testifying to Congress, while Horwitz wins a Pulitzer for its columns. And Facebook continues on.

I found this 112-minute film interesting enough to be worth seeing, yet uneven. THE SOCIAL NETWORK also bounded back and forth in time, but in a more coherent fashion. In the case of THE SOCIAL RECKONING, it was unclear where the story was even heading for a good half hour.

The movie's decision to spend most of its time centered on a flatly unlikeable character, Frances, was certainly a choice. Whether or not one agrees with her concerns and/or ethics, Frances is an unhappy young woman; she even comments while watching a basketball game that she's never felt as happy as a player she sees on the TV screen.

Frances is hyperworried, both about Facebook and her response to how the company is run; she repeatedly claims to love her job, but she doesn't demonstrate it. Moreover, there seems to be nothing or no one in her life other than her job worries and her ongoing struggle with celiac disease. 

I'm unfamiliar with Madison's work, though she recently won an Oscar for ANORA (2024), and her flat, uninteresting performance frankly doesn't cause me to have an interest in her future work.

White, on the other hand, has some real snap and vigor in his sympathetic portrayal of the Wall Street Journal reporter; without him the movie would have sunk. I did find his character's snobbery about the need for journalistic credentials annoying, but for the most part the character was engaging, reasonable, and incredibly patient dealing with the annoying Frances.

Strong, like Jesse Eisenberg in the previous film, portrays Facebook's Zuckerberg as seemingly autistic, robotically unable to process normal human cues or express emotion. The portrayal is downright mean, prompting the question as to whether it's fair.  I have no idea, and I'd like to know more.

One of the things I appreciate about Aaron Sorkin's scripts is that even when I don't agree with his -- or his characters' -- points of view, they entertain and drive thoughtful discussion. And as someone firmly in the freedom of speech camp, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of fairly balanced debates between Zuckerberg and his ex-friend on that issue.

That said, some important points were left out, i.e., was/is Facebook simply a "common carrier" platform for others' speech, or did it have the right, or even responsibility, to determine its own facts and silence those points it didn't agree with, sometimes in the name of shutting down "extremism"? 

In the latter case, censorship would turn Facebook into a publisher responsible for everything on its site, placing it in legal peril. These significant issues were ignored and would have helped clarify the issues with both Facebook and potential government intervention.

I was also annoyed by the film's unquestioning acceptance that social media debate over the handling of COVID, and especially vaccinations, was problematic. As someone who was among those injured by the COVID vaccine, I'd suggest the healthiest thing would have been much more extensive debate and free discussion on these issues, and that's all I'll say on that topic.

Among the supporting cast I was entertained by Betty Gilpin as one of Horwitz's superiors at the Wall Street Journal, though in her own way her social interactions were as unhealthy as Zuckerberg's. If the real people portrayed here truly acted as depicted, one has to wonder about the lack of maturity in dealing with others.  Yet these people, at the top of major media and social media companies, are ruling our world?!

One may wonder, after this critique, why I said it was interesting enough to be worth seeing, despite being uneven; it's exactly because the movie caused me to think long and hard about what I was watching, both during and after.

THE SOCIAL RECKONING was filmed by Jeff Cronenweth, who also filmed the earlier movie.

Coming soon: A review of another new film, ANGEL AND THE BADMAN (1947), which loosely remakes a favorite John Wayne title.

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