The Social Reckoning

2010’s The Social Network already contended with the consequences of Mark Zuckerberg’s creation with a trailer whose music has become a landmark, with a gripping choral cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”—establishing the cover song as a well-trodden convention in modern trailer editing techniques. Sixteen years later, well—it’s all in the title, isn’t it?

Written and directed by the inimitable Aaron Sorkin, The Social Reckoning covers the true story of Facebook engineer and whistleblower Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) with a 2021 leak. Jeremy Strong takes over the role of Mark Zuckerberg from Jesse Eisenberg—not so much the dorm room dweller this time, so much as the incorrigible centre of a digital hegemon.

The trailer opens by introducing Horwitz as an investigative reporter with “not even a little bit” of interest in his target. It’s classic Sorkin; the dialogue supplies its own percussion, with clipped questions and answers passing the narrative from speaker to speaker as ominous sounds set the aural stage.

At 0:08 we hear a digital arpeggiator—maybe a little on the nose for digital media, but no less appropriate—cue a robotic Zuckerberg (Strong, though it takes a double take to discern) evidently being trained for a future court appearance, sporting a subtly awful haircut. Notice how the soundtrack cuts out for his disturbingly performative head nod.

Following rapid fire dialogue between Haugen and Horwitz, culminating in a small mea culpa (Horwitz is a tech report… “ish”), the soundtrack returns, now with the addition of some time-honoured ticking, and of course the director’s title card (as that’s half the reason for this film getting green lit, one might surmise). At 0:52 that ticking is laid bare in the score—a parallel to the leaker’s revelations about knowingly spreading misinformation, leading to radicalization for the sake of engagement.

At 0:59 the soundtrack shifts to light electric guitar, as Haugen launches into an explainer of Facebook’s nefarious practices—this turns out to be a trailerization of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Sacrilege”, a 2013 track. Notice the audiovisual synch at 1:28, using clicks and rapid fire close-ups of a digital screen in the place we’d expect to hear an epic percussion flourish. As Haugen continues and the disclosures become darker, the inclusion of epic percussion and general intensity of the score follows suit.

“Sacrilege” follows an earlier teaser quoting the Social Media’s score: the “Hand Covers Bruise”⁠ theme by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. However, Alexandre Desplat is scoring the new film, so this newer trailer moves ahead with the Facebook of more recent times⁠. It’s a deliberate sequence.

The Social Reckoning reaches theatres October 9.

— Curtis Perry