Commentary: The Social Reckoning is not a remake or a reboot, and it’s all the better for it.

If you’re online and like movies, you should probably go see The Social Reckoning.

The Social Reckoning, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, is a companion film to David Fincher’s famed 2011 Facebook movie, The Social Network. Don’t expect a true sequel. The two flicks are certainly in conversation with each other — there is a new signature drink that I’m convinced is a callback to Justin Timberlake’s infamous appletini scene — but The Social Reckoning isn’t a remake or reboot.

If Fincher’s film is about the rise of Mark Zuckerberg as a tech god and Facebook as a new religion, Sorkin’s is a stark look at what happens when people stop believing. 

The movie follows the true story of Facebook engineer-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison, star of Anora) as she becomes disillusioned with the social media giant and the harm it wreaks. She ends up leaking thousands of internal Facebook documents to then-Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (played by Jeremy Allen White, The Bear).

Horwitz published a series of investigative reports in 2021, called the Facebook Files, that proved that Facebook actively promoted hate groups, encouraged radicalization and inflicted serious harm on teens’ mental health. An intractable Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong, Succession) is at the center of a public relations maelstrom that quickly becomes the least of Facebook’s problems.

It’s an uncomfortably relevant film. Earlier this year, Facebook, now called Meta, lost two major bellwether trials , with the juries finding the company guilty of creating intentionally addictive social media platforms and endangering children and teens.

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