Whether we know it or not, the government regulates almost every second of our daily lives. We drive cars according to the law, eat food that has passed safety inspections, watch television that is deemed socially responsible, and sleep in beds that have been made with approved materials. Recent polls and studies suggest the average person spends about 1-2 hours on social media per day. That number almost doubles as the age bracket gets younger, with platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok being just as big a part of daily life as food and air. And yet, there's hardly an ounce of regulation tying it down, with users free to project and/or ingest anything they want.

As alluded to by the apt title, writer/director Aaron Sorkin feels that we are at the moment of reckoning with the Pandora's box that is social media. As much as mythology is never strictly factual, its lessons on the dangers of total free will have always been pertinent, warnings that when kerosene and matches are nearby, we can't help but feel the need to play with them. Perhaps this is Sorkin's way of atoning for the responsibility he feels in aggrandizing the rise of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in The Social Network. However much his intentions were with his script, under David Fincher's slick direction and the decade-defining techno score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, a certain swarm of viewers couldn't help but see how cool it was for an idea to immediately turn into an empire with 2.8 billion followers and over $1 trillion in value.

Billed more as a companion piece rather than a direct sequel, The Social Reckoning never aims to be cool. It is vehemently old-school, featuring a protagonist who is introduced as not being able to work the navigation system in his rental car. Whether that is a fact or script invention, it's one of many things that make Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) into the ideal Sorkin character. He's an investigative tech reporter who's almost a Luddite, makes references to Old Hollywood musicals and Frank Capra films, and personally handwrites letters to each employee of the Facebook Civil Integrity team. His goal is to get hard facts on how Facebook has become the global disseminator of political and social information, specifically how the algorithm pushes hyperactive users further down the rabbit hole of radicalization and disinformation.

The Deep Throat to his Woodward/Bernstein is Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison). She's part of the Facebook "family," one that prides itself on never allowing employees to ask ethical questions or put their concerns in writing. Frances is an awkward person: fidgety with her hands and hair, eyes usually looking down during a conversation, and wearing wrist warmers from her neurological condition. Between her technological expertise on the inside and his investigative skills, the often reluctant pair work to define the specifics behind a downward trend that we all generally feel.

With his signature mile-a-minute dialogue and ability to make exposition dumps feel incredibly entertaining, journalism is a genre that suits Sorkin incredibly well, so much so that he even created an entire television show for it (The Newsroom). Scenes with multiple characters often have overlapping and turn-taking dialogue, each constantly proving to be the smartest in the room. The more barbed the exchanges are, the more they crackle through the teal-toned frames by cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth.

Bill Burr plays Charlie, a former friend of the billionaire, who serves as a vessel so Sorkin can debate Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong, replacing Jesse Eisenberg), and becomes an adversary once he sees the darkness take over the light. During a congressional hearing prep session that just so happens to take place on January 06, 2021, the pair engage in a heated argument over Facebook's deprioritization of oversight on its content. Guardrails create friction for engagement, with Zuckerberg seeing the platform as a nonpartisan public square. But how much impartiality can Zuckerberg claim when his platform is literally engineered to supply outrage content perpetually?

For as much as these scenes amount to little more than wish fulfillment on the part of Sorkin, they create a good excuse for Strong to portray Zuckerberg as a modern-day Roman emperor. He is a natural, more grown-up version of Eisenberg's version of the character, still with clipped speech patterns and poorly disguised narcissism. Madison proves that her Oscar win for Anora was no fluke, and White is a sturdy beacon of professionalism.

Sorkin leaning into sentimentality creates a deadly pit of syrupy nonsense, which has stymied his previous two directorial projects, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Being the Ricardos. That same self-inflicted wound is enacted here with an unbearably hokey final stretch that attempts to put an inspirational little bow on everything. Even Alexandre Desplat's Hollywood score swells to a crescendo, making this no-nonsense presentation feel more like a gentle reminder.

Sony Pictures Releasing will release The Social Reckoning in theaters nationwide on October 09th.