Film Review - The Social Reckoning (2026)

The Social Reckoning is the new film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin and stars Mikey Madison in her first role since her Oscar win for Anora as Frances Haugen who works at Facebook but is uncomfortable with the changes to the platform the company is making and works with a Wall Street Journal reporter (Jeremy Allen White) to blow the whistle on the company’s wrong doings.

The Social Reckoning is not a bad movie, but it is also a flat, dull and boring film to sit through and the first issue I have with it is that it feels like this movie just doesn’t really understand what makes a good journalism story tick,

The key to a good journalism movie like All the President’s Men or The Post is the inherent ticking clock at their centre, much like reporters for real life there is a deadline to meet and that creates a sense of “we have to get this story done and quickly” and this movie doesn’t have that, it all feels too leisurely and slack to have any real bite to it,

And part of the problem is Sorkin himself, his direction just feels very by the book and uninspired for the most part and his writing also feels old fashioned and I couldn’t help but think that he himself is partially responsible for the mess he’s trying to depict in this movie,

As Sorkin’s biggest claim to fame was the TV show The West Wing which starred Martin Sheen as President Jeb Bartlett, and it feels like ever since that show’s idealistic portrait of Democratic party politics in terms of not really putting up much of a fight has helped to plant some sort of seed for how we got to where we are in 2026 and to now have Sorkin try and pin the blame elsewhere doesn’t really work as he himself also needs to reflect on his role in all of this,

As for the performances both Madison and White do what they can but the film just treats their characters with little to no urgency and in some scenes Madison is dressed as if she’s doing her Anora character again, Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckberg firstly cannot fill the huge hole Jesse Eisenberg’s absence has left and secondly he just felt like he was doing a riff on his character in Obsession (in fact more than once I thought of “I’M THE ELDEST BOY”),

Far better are Billy Magnussen (who gets a role that highlights his inherent smugness and up himself personality well), Betty Gilpin and Bill Burr as those 3 at least feel like real people as opposed to thinly written characters who talk like people from the 1990’s,

And so that was the Social Reckoning and it’s not awful but it’s not much of a movie either, 1.5 out of 5.