The Social Wreck-oning: Sorkin’s sequel sucks

As an aspiring reporter, I consume journalism movies voraciously. From “All the President’s Men” to “Spotlight” and even “The Post” — I just can’t get enough. But after watching “The Social Reckoning,” I realized that not all journalism movies are created equally.

Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, “The Social Reckoning” tells the true story of whistleblower Frances Haugen’s collaboration with reporter Jeff Horwitz to reveal Facebook executives knew the platform’s negative effects on users’ mental health and political polarization.

In 2021 The Wall Street Journal published a series of articles about Haugen’s findings called “The Facebook Files.” The series included articles about Facebook’s connection to the negative effects on teenage girls’ body images and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Billed as the sequel to David Fincher’s 2010 film “The Social Network,” the project fails to measure up to its predecessor.

Sorkin’s trademark fast-paced dialogue, falters under the weight of newsroom mechanics. What’s left struggling to keep the film afloat is a strong central cast.

Mikey Madison carries the film with her performance as Frances Haugen. She masterfully portrays Haugen’s transformation from a meek, unseen tech employee who can’t get her questions answered in team meetings into the whistleblower who testifies before Congress.

Jeremy Strong’s performance as Mark Zuckerberg perfectly encapsulates the deadpan and soulless energy that Mark Zuckerberg often gives off. To capture this energy – or lack thereof – Strong stayed in character 24/7 during the filming process. 

Jeremy Allen White’s performance is perfectly adequate. It’s definitely not his best work, and it felt reserved in comparison to Madison and Strong, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Robert Redford-esque approach White takes to portraying Jeff Horowitz. 

However, strong performances cannot disguise how static the characters remain on the page.

Haugen has some character development, but it happens primarily in the third act. Horwitz has even less of an arc. He starts the film as an investigative reporter with little tech aptitude, lacking even a personal Facebook account despite covering the beat. He mainly acts as the cavalier leading man who works to pull the story out of Haugen and onto paper.  

Sorkin’s rapid pace repeatedly undercuts the film’s investigative core. Multiple times throughout the movie Haugen and Horwitz discuss complex reporting only for crucial details to slip past unnoticed beneath the speedy conversation style.

This issue was most apparent in the discussion about technology. Meaningful Social Interaction (MSI) was a key point throughout the movie. Executives developed MSI with the goal of increasing personal interactions on Facebook. To boost it they developed an algorithm that would assign points to interactions, with comments and reshares gaining 15 to 30 times as many points as likes.

The film shows that an MSI-based algorithm leads to people seeing “outrage porn” – content specifically designed to provoke users – because of the value of sharing and commenting. However, this was not explained very clearly until the movie neared its end. MSI is consistently mentioned, but viewers are only told what it means when the phrase flashes across the screen as a chapter title.

This is where White’s portrayal of Horwitz helps the viewer. In real life, Horwitz actually was fairly competent with technology when he began investigating Facebook. Sorkin’s choice to make him inept in the film creates a vessel through which some of the more complicated tech jargon gets explained as Haugen has to interpreted everything to the journalist in layman’s terms. 

Action is also lacking as most scenes focus on people conversing in rooms. Because many of these conversations take place in offices, the colors in the movie are extremely monochromatic.

The score for this film greatly assists in places where the writing fails to properly demonstrate the characters’ emotions. Rather than taking inspiration from the heavy synth that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross used in “The Social Network,” composer Alexandre Desplat adopted a full orchestra for this film. 

Grandiosity helps sell the gravity of Haugen and Horwitz’s decision to face up against the tech giant and underscores the emotional weight of the investigative process. It works particularly well for scenes depicting Haugen’s internal conflict over turning her back on the company. 

I knew when “The Social Reckoning” was first announced that it could never compare to its predecessor, but I hoped the film could act as a solid follow-up story. While the cast and crew deliver a serious portrayal of the individuals who exposed Facebook’s wrongdoings, the film is severely hindered by Sorkin’s disappointingly lackluster writing.  

After years of consuming journalism media like a vacuum, I’ve finally discovered a piece that couldn’t be saved by the subject matter. “The Social Reckoning” was a disappointing letdown.