This Bonkers Jan. 6 Scene Ruins Aaron Sorkin’s Smug Sequel

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty/Sony Pictures It’s a familiar scenario: You’re watching a movie, and everything is going well.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, comes a moment that leaves such a rotten taste in your mouth that it ruins the entire experience.

Welcome to The Social Reckoning .

Let’s take a step back: Aaron Sorkin’s latest film is a sequel to the 2010 masterpiece The Social Network .

Sorkin won an Oscar for writing the original, with David Fincher directing.

But Fincher has no involvement in the sequel.

This one is all Sorkin. [ WARNING : Spoilers ahead] Sorkin’s film explores how Facebook became a force for evil rather than good, and the effort to expose that, led by Facebook employee Frances Haugen ( Anora’ s Mikey Madison) and investigative journalist Jeff Horowitz ( The Bear’ s Jeremy Allen White).

The movie opens with what seems like a seemingly disconnected scene: An intoxicated white lady (Portia Doubleday) goes on a racist tirade against some police officers.

We eventually learn that this woman was an old friend of Frances who used to be politically left, before Facebook radicalized her into joining right-wing extremist groups.

Frances states in the film that 64 percent of people who joined extremist groups on Facebook were driven there by Facebook’s algorithm rather than looking for them themselves.

That’s a staggering and damning statistic, and The Social Reckoning gets a lot of mileage out of it.

For most of its 112-minute runtime, The Social Reckoning works.

Sorkin has a strong sense of pacing, and his wordy, dialogue-heavy style suits a procedural story like this one.

Madison makes a compelling lead, and even if the information on display doesn’t feel particularly new or shocking to anyone who spends a lot of time on the internet, it’s presented in an intriguing procedural fashion.