The Social Reckoning: Like, Share, Reckon

The trouble with making a sequel to a film as established as The Social Network is that comparison becomes unavoidable. In fact, comparison may be the very reason many people will walk into the cinema to see The Social Reckoning in the first place.

And the comparison is not entirely unfair.

Aaron Sorkin returns, this time as both writer and director, but David Fincher's visual grammar is noticeably absent. Where The Social Network turned conversations into something almost kinetic, The Social Reckoning is more interested in what those conversations reveal.

The result is a very different kind of film.

Inspired by the real-life Facebook Files, the film follows Frances Haugen, a Facebook engineer played by Mikey Madison and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, played by Jeremy Allen White, as they begin uncovering evidence about the company's algorithms and the decisions taken by its founder Mark Zuckerberg, played by Jeremy Strong. Haugen has the knowledge; Horwitz needs the evidence. What follows is part investigative thriller, part newsroom drama, and part social commentary.

The film understands that a journalist cannot simply know something; they have to be able to prove it. And Sorkin makes that process entertaining. The humour and sarcasm land well. The pacing is sharp and the dialogue crackles. The non-linear storytelling is confident. The performances are strong throughout. Characters spar with one another as though every conversation were a tennis match. Sorkin is clearly interested not simply in telling us what Facebook did, but in making us think about how stories about Facebook, and stories consumed through Facebook, are constructed in the first place.

The Social Network was about the creation of a platform. The Social Reckoning is about what happened once that platform became powerful enough to shape the world around it. The story is necessary to tell. You may not agree with everything the film does. You may even find yourself arguing with it on the way home. Which, for a film about social media, feels rather appropriate. Because you can scroll past a story. You can mute it. You can unlike it. But you can't quite like this one away.

You will compare it to The Social Network. Everyone does. Come to the screening, then tell us which one wins.

The Social Reckoning is now showing at HPPH. Find times and tickets here.