The Social Reckoning Review: Aaron Sorkin's Social Network Sequel Is Entirely Unnecessary

"The Social Reckoning" very well might be the worst movie of 2026 — and it's definitely the one with the biggest identity crisis. Intended to be positioned as a long-awaited sequel to "The Social Network" and a prestige drama about wrongdoing at Facebook in our modern era, "The Social Reckoning" should not be mentioned in the same breath as "The Social Network," is a pale and pathetic facsimile of a prestige drama, and isn't a reckoning by any definition. Instead, it's a poorly performed, directed, and written slog of a film.

Over a decade after Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher created the masterpiece that is "The Social Network" — a loose retelling of "The Accidental Billionaires" by Ben Mezrich – Sorkin, for reasons not particularly clear to anyone, decided to revisit the topic of Facebook. Unfortunately, Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for "The Social Network" and should now be required to return it to the Academy for the crimes committed by "The Social Reckoning," decided to make a film that says nothing, means nothing, has no plot, has no stakes, and actively hates its audience. It's a throughline in Sorkin's work that he considers himself intellectually leagues above the average viewer, but man, "The Social Reckoning" shows such contempt for anyone who dares to watch it that it would be uncomfortable if it wasn't also so dull.

The gist is that, in 2019, Facebook employee Frances Haugen (a woefully miscast Mikey Madison) starts growing suspicious of Facebook's approach to content; at the same time, Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (a bored Jeremy Allen White) heads to the Bay Area to investigate potential wrongdoing at the tech company. From there, we also meet Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong doing his best Kermit the Frog), and the stories ... sort of intertwine.

Throughout "The Social Reckoning" — a movie comprised of a "prologue" and three "chapters," because Aaron Sorkin is a blowhard — Sorkin sweatily and desperately tries to pull off the same dual-timeline trick he managed in "The Social Network" by showing Mark Zuckerberg preparing for potential Senate hearings alongside Frances and Jeff getting to the bottom of Facebook's "MSI" program, or "meaningful social interactions." The drive to investigate this, according to a fully robotic Frances, is that she once knew a girl with left-wing politics (played in the prologue by Portia Doubleday) who then uploaded a video to Facebook of herself being racist toward two police officers of color. If you have ever spent more than five minutes on social media, you know that everyone there is, basically, angry and insane. That's the message that "The Social Reckoning" hits you over the head with over and over again throughout its narrative as Frances and Jeff attempt to prove that the Facebook algorithm is meant to make people angrier and more insane, leading to an uptick in extremist groups.

Let's address the "Social Network" of it all. David Fincher and Sorkin's movie had something to say and was a true character study in that Jesse Eisenberg's irritating but brilliant Mark Zuckerberg created a website to spite an ex-girlfriend that would ostensibly help foster human connection, even as he's unable to maintain a single connection in his own life. So what is "The Social Reckoning" ... about, besides the fact that social media is bad for your brain? Nothing, actually. If you enjoy watching people yell at their laptops, over-explain and repeat the same thing dozens of times, and never do anything interesting, this is the movie for you.

If you want to learn more about what was going on behind the scenes at Facebook during the early 2020s, read "Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism" by former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams. You won't actually learn anything important by watching "The Social Reckoning." Mark Zuckerberg's Senate preparation scenes — only livened up by Bill Burr as his former friend Charlie, the lone character with common sense and any semblance of a personality — all end with him repeating that he loves free speech. All of Frances' scenes are about how she loves her job and believes in Facebook, and all of Jeff's scenes are about working on his story — but none of these feel exciting, fulfilling, or like the stakes are even particularly high. 

Gone are the propulsive editing, thrilling score, and astonishing performances found in "The Social Network." Against all odds, Mikey Madison is dreadful as Frances (if Burr is outperforming an actual Oscar winner in your film, you've got a problem). The usually striking Jeremys — Strong and Allen White — barely get to show range, and that's probably because none of the characters have an ounce of interiority or depth. Instead, you spend the entire run time of "The Social Reckoning" being bashed over the head with a clunky dialogue hammer (Aaron Sorkin, if this film is any indication, does not got the juice anymore) that preaches to its audience without giving said audience an ounce of credit. (There's a "twist," to put it mildly, with Portia Doubleday's troublemaker that elicits groans, not gasps.) "The Social Reckoning" isn't a good movie, nor is it a reckoning ... unless it's a "reckoning" for Sorkin regarding his embarrassing prowess as a director.

"The Social Reckoning" premieres in theaters on October 9.