A compelling modern morality tale but Aaron Sorkin's sequel becomes almost impossible to follow: BRIAN VINER reviews The Social Reckoning

Published: 05:15 EDT, 8 October 2026 | Updated: 05:35 EDT, 8 October 2026 The Social Reckoning (15, 112 mins)Rating: Three out of five stars If you believe that social media is one of the most troubling blights on our age, then this film is well worth seeing.It is notionally a sequel to David Fincher’s movie The Social Network (2010), which chronicled in a broadly upbeat way the origins of Facebook, presenting its creator Mark Zuckerberg (then played by Jesse Eisenberg) as nerdy but brilliant: a tech genius only verging on sociopathic behaviour.Aaron Sorkin, who scripted the original film, now also takes over directing duties. Having failed to persuade Eisenberg to reprise the role, he has Jeremy Strong playing Zuckerberg, this time as a fully fledged sociopath, seemingly complicit in the warping of Facebook, and other social media platforms run by his company Meta, into something malignant.This is conveyed through the true story of Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), an idealistic data scientist for Facebook who believed strongly in its mission to connect people, but gradually realised that it was doing so in a most insidious and sinister way, unearthing the alarming statistic that 64 per cent of those who joined extremist groups on the site were sent there by Facebook’s own algorithms. The Social Reckoning is the story of Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a Facebook employee turned whistleblower who teams up with journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) Aaron Sorkin, who scripted the original film, now also takes over directing duties. Having failed to persuade Jesse Eisenberg to reprise the role, he has Jeremy Strong playing ZuckerbergThis led inexorably, the film implies, to the January 6, 2021 events at the Capitol.The Social Reckoning tells us how Haugen turned whistleblower, handing her evidence to Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), an investigative reporter on the Wall Street Journal. All this is rendered more complex than it needs to be by a zippy timeline that becomes almost impossible to follow.I also find myself tiring of the way Sorkin seems to forge all his most noble characters in his own image: liberal crusaders for truth and justice, with lightning-quick minds, effortlessly quipping their way in and out of trouble.His TV hit The West Wing was like that and he’s still at it, in a film that tries just a little too hard to be a tech version of the 1976 classic All The President’s Men. But if you can overlook all that, it’s a compelling modern morality tale.The Social Reckoning is in UK cinemas from October 9.