The Social Network did what almost everyone thought was impossible: make Facebook’s creation exciting.

Aaron Sorkin won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and since its 2011 release, many consider it one of the best-edited films of all time.

So while the story of how the world’s youngest-ever billionaire got sued by his closest friend and his meteoric rise due to the creation of Facebook was fantastic, does it really require an indirect sequel 15 years later?

Obviously Sony and Sorkin thought so, and now we have a film about the Facebook whistleblower leaking internal documents to The Wall Street Journal, detailing how the company knew it was exposing people to harmful content.

Best Actress winner Mickey Madison plays Frances Haugen, a Meta employee who joins Facebook hoping to bring the world together through social media.

She learns Meta has allowed harmful content, particularly on Instagram, to appear in users’ feeds because it correlates with higher retention rates. The content shown has also been linked with the worsening mental health of its users, specifically teenage girls.

Haugen then leaks the information to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), and the pair work to change how social media presents and filters news and content.

While The Social Reckoning is a companion piece to The Social Network, it is by no means a sequel. Zuckerberg isn’t the focus. It doesn’t retain any of the same actors, and aside from Sorkin writing and taking over from David Fincher to direct, a lot of the people behind the camera have changed.

The direction is less a retelling of events and more an investigative drama, creating an almost entirely different feel from the 2011 film.

This is where The Social Reckoning will lose people.

The film lacks David Fincher’s flair that made the 2011 movie so gripping. It feels more like a documentary than entertainment.

There aren’t any characters here. Everyone is just delivering info through exposition.

Whether you like Jesse Eisenberg or not, you can’t deny he was the centre of the first film, and his almost psychopathic delivery made audiences hate him. Add in Andrew Garfield as the naive Eduardo Savrin and Justin Timberlake as the weaselly Sean Parker, and you’ve got an iconic trio of characters.

That’s just not the case for The Social Reckoning. Everyone plays their roles almost exactly as you expect, which is fine but does little to elevate the movie’s emotion.

The plot doesn’t lend itself to a particularly interesting narrative. While the leak findings, the court outcomes and the lack of repercussions are all very shocking, they don’t form a narrative; they’re just scary facts.

The Social Reckoning is pretty underwhelming given the near-identical promotion it had to The Social Network.

Unfortunately, its quick, snappy, very Sorkin dialogue doesn’t do enough to make the story very interesting to watch.

While the impacts of social media on mental health and its role in spreading misinformation and disinformation need to be discussed, this film wasn’t skilful enough to pull it off.

The Social Reckoning is now showing in cinemas across the country.