REVIEW: ‘The Social Reckoning’ Is A Complete Trainwreck

The Social Reckoning is, first and foremost, not a sequel to the far superior The Social Network. Forget that the only thing they share in common creatively is Aaron Sorkin’s authorship; with Sorkin in the director’s chair and a different actor behind Mark Zuckerberg’s dead eyes, the tone is remarkably different and the interpretation of Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) as a character is completely alien.

In 2021, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) published a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal based on leaked internal Facebook data provided by Frances Haugen. The articles clearly outlined a litany of horrid information the company knowingly suppressed about the effects of its platforms on its users. The Social Reckoning dramatizes the journalistic process of acquiring the leaked information while also painting a portrait of Zuckerberg through his preparation for an unrelated congressional hearing about a bill that might regulate Facebook.

There’s a scene with a contrived personal conflict you couldn’t pay the audience to care about, where Bill Burr (playing the only character in the whole movie who talks like a normal human being) asks Zuckerberg if he thinks the average person wants the internet to be over. After watching The Social Reckoning, the answer is a resounding ‘yes ’: I would love for the internet to be over.

The Social Reckoning lays it on painfully thick.

But not because Aaron Sorkin’s witty pen and clever insights convinced me. I, like most people who will see The Social Reckoning, already loathe social media. Rather, if Zuckerberg decided to end the internet, I would have been spared having to sit through the rest of the movie.

The Social Reckoning is all but unbearable. Its level of self-congratulatory, treacly triumphalism is burning a hole in its back with how much its patting itself. The corny dialogue and unbelievably sincere score aren’t quite insufferable, so much as they feel like watching a clown car get into a slow-motion wreck. Its ridiculousness compounds as the red noses pile up, and while you worry whether everything’s going to be okay, you still cannot help but rubberneck.

Part of the rubbernecking is on account of the bizarre sexual tension between Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison. Spoiler: Horwitz and Haugen don’t get together at any point, but boy does The Social Reckoning go out of its way to make you spend the whole movie wondering whether they will. It’s a stretch to say it distracts from the movie’s true heart, though, since it’s about one of the only interesting things happening on-screen during their scenes.

The best you can say is that it kind of works as a thriller. Kind of.

Mostly, they’re in contained spaces taking photos of data charts and having technobabble lessons about what any of the proof of Facebook’s evils mean. If it’s for the audience’s sake, assuredly, Sorkin could have skipped most of it since I don’t remember just about anything besides the single important one: meaningful social interactions.

If a kudos can be paid to The Social Reckoning, it’s that it does capture you as a thriller of sorts. You’re propelled through the narrative, eyes rolling at the canned one-liners and over-explanations along the way. I was intrigued to find out what Zuckerberg did to juice the Facebook algorithms into the monstrous disaster for all mankind it became. Once you find out the answer, though? The air comes farting out of the bag while the movie triples down simultaneously on sentimentality and sincerity.

Terrifying footage of the evils Facebook has wrought plays in tandem with a triumphant speech and a swelling score that have no business being edited together. And when the movie wraps up, it does so with on-screen text about how absolutely nothing changed as a result of these people’s bravery. Just a goofy callback punctuates the emptiness of the whole project.

The Social Reckoning can’t figure out what audience it’s trying to appeal to. 

Who is The Social Reckoning for? What is it trying to accomplish? As a political message, it’s empty. People who know of Facebook’s evils are already well aware, and the people who aren’t won’t see this movie. And none of them will be “hurt” by the movie in any meaningful way, as Sorkin insists is the only way you can effect change.

If he’s right, which he may well be, it’s surely not a movie that will hurt Zuckerberg, or Facebook, or Congress, or anybody else who is evidently culpable. The movie wants you to feel good in the end. It’s completely incongruous with its own message and will only leave viewers feeling like there’s nothing much to be done at this point.

Unless, that is, you come away from The Social Reckoning so disgusted with Mark Zuckerberg that you’ll at least delete your Facebook account out of spite. Sure, you should have done so years ago, when the Facebook Files came out, maybe, at the latest. Jeremy Strong does such a great job making Zuckerberg seem like the lowliest and most pathetic person there is.

If nothing else, The Social Reckoning digs deep to show Mark Zuckerberg as a monster.

The script actually helps this one aspect. He is so condescending, so lifeless, so completely lacking in basic human decency in every interaction and every little movement of his frozen face. If you’ll come away with one thing from this movie, at least it’s a complete hatred for Facebook and its founder. He’s not the cute kid from Harvard anymore, thankfully (and the worst parts of the script are happy to remind you of that). He’s just a complete monster.

The Social Reckoning isn’t wrong. It’s just the absolute wrong movie for the moment. It’s an overly sentimental approach to what is clearly one of the greatest man-made catastrophes in human history. Its tone is nonsensical and hard to take seriously. And yet, its vitriol for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg himself is abundantly clear and, thanks to Jeremy Strong, harrowingly effective. This is by no means a movie to match the moment, but at least it makes Zuckerberg look like a schmuck. 

The Social Reckoning is in theaters everywhere October 9th, 2026.