11/10/26

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Sixteen years after The Social Network, this belated (sort of) sequel takes another look at the Facebook phenomenon. David Fincher’s original was a zippy, fast-paced affair, but The Social Reckoning is a much darker beast, one that carries with it a powerfully pessimistic view of online media and asks some uncomfortable questions about its potential future. Original screenwriter Aaron Sorkin takes on the directorial duties and Jeremy Strong steps gamely into a role that Jesse Eisenberg clearly had no wish to revisit. Where the first film’s depiction of Mark Zuckerberg has him as a plucky but flawed underdog, here he’s just plain weird, a man completely fixated on his brainchild and its ratings, with no apparent concerns for any harm it might be causing to the billions of people that use it.

Someone who is concerned is Facebook employee Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), who in 2019 joins the Civic Integrity Programme, truly believing in FB’s potential as a democratic mouthpiece. She is appalled to discover that a former friend, Kayleigh – once a carefree, like-minded young woman – is now an active member of a far-right group that she discovered on the site. (We’ve been introduced to the new Kayleigh in the film’s opening sequence, shouting vehement racist abuse at the Black and Latina police officers who come to her aid after her car breaks down.)

The more Frances searches for answers the worse things get, and her attempts to discuss the matter with her colleagues are given short shrift. She ends up contacting Wall Street Journal Investigative Reporter, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), who is currently looking into the website’s fact-checking procedures.

Frances is at first determined to keep her involvement with the newspaper secret but, as the years steadily march by, moving through the global pandemic towards 2021’s violent insurrection at the White House, Frances begins to realise that she is going to have to stick her head above the parapet in order to make herself heard…

While this misses Fincher’s visual command, it does feature Sorkin’s clever and distinctive dialogue, which – while it might bear little resemblance to real conversation – provides plenty of ironic chuckles and edgy asides. Allen White plays his role straight, a guy so unfamiliar with the digital age he can’t even use his car’s satnav, while Madison delivers an impressive study of the nervy, self-conscious Frances, slowly emerging from her self-protective shell.

There’s also a wonderful sequence where the news of the invasion of the White House plays out on dozens of screens while everybody in FB HQ is begging Zuckerberg to suspend the President’s account – but he really, REALLY has to think about it for a very long time before complying.

This is an uncompromising and well-intentioned film with a powerful message at its core – and I’m all too aware of the ironic fact that, once I’ve finished editing this review, Facebook will be the first place it’s shared. But Sorkin does ask some terrifying questions about Social Media and where it’s doing to us.

4 stars

Philip Caveney