This follow-up to The Social Network turns Facebook’s whistleblower scandal into a drama about corporate secrecy. Yet despite Jeremy Strong’s cold, vacant Mark Zuckerberg, the film rarely generates much suspense.

The Social Network (2010) was, on paper, a story about socially awkward students building a website. In practice, it became a sharply entertaining awards success, winning three Oscars and receiving five further nominations. David Fincher directed Aaron Sorkin’s rapid-fire script, while Jesse Eisenberg made Zuckerberg both irritating and magnetic. Against expectation, the early disputes surrounding Facebook became as gripping as a high-stakes thriller. Sixteen years later, The Social Reckoning arrives as a loose successor, with material that could have been even more explosive.

Facebook remains at the centre of the story, but Sorkin now directs as well as writes, and Jeremy Strong replaces Eisenberg as Zuckerberg. Eisenberg’s portrayal suggested a sulky young ruler convinced of his own brilliance. Strong instead plays him as a lifeless, humourless executive, another of the actor’s intimidating men in power.

The subject has shifted as well. Where The Social Network focused on lawsuits among the Harvard students involved in Facebook’s creation, The Social Reckoning follows a whistleblower and a reporter uncovering the platform’s wider consequences. It is, in theory, a far larger story. In practice, though, it feels markedly less substantial. Sorkin wants to examine the unnerving influence social media companies have over public life, but the film itself is unlikely to leave much of an impression.

Jeremy Allen White plays Jeff Horwitz, an investigative journalist who moves to the San Francisco office of the Wall Street Journal in 2019. Curious about what Facebook is concealing, he struggles to persuade employees to speak until he reaches Frances Haugen, played by Mikey Madison. During a guarded meeting, Haugen explains that users can be guided towards extremist communities. It is only one of several concerns she encountered while working for the company’s Civic Integrity division.

At first, the approach seems promising. Sorkin appears to be reaching for the kind of determined newsroom thriller associated with All the President’s Men and Spotlight, and there are moments when the film approaches that level. Its opening scene gives an unsettlingly plausible picture of online radicalisation, while the statistics concerning Facebook’s effect on mental health carry real weight. Horwitz discovers that internal Instagram research found that 32% of teenage girls already worried about their bodies felt worse after using the app.

Still, The Social Reckoning never develops the pressure or momentum such a story requires. It also lacks the sleek visual drive Fincher might have supplied. Horwitz and Haugen repeatedly mention possible risks to their safety, but the danger never becomes tangible. Nobody seems to be pursuing them, threatening them, or seriously trying to stop them.

Unlike his prominent role in The Social Network, Zuckerberg is mostly a background figure here, with little emotional depth. Madison is given far less of the fierce vitality she brought to Anora. Haugen herself was blue-eyed, blonde and in her late thirties when these events unfolded, making Madison feel like an especially unconvincing match. Horwitz, meanwhile, may have earned a Pulitzer Prize in real life, but his investigative work on screen mostly involves listening to Haugen and creating a false Facebook profile. More regrettably, the film never gives him the memorable headband seen in one of his television appearances.

Sorkin attempts to energise the quiet plot by moving between two timelines. In one, Horwitz and Haugen meet repeatedly: she shares material, says she cares about her work, and insists she will not assist him again before inevitably changing her mind. In the other, Zuckerberg prepares for a Senate hearing. There are flashes of Sorkin’s familiar brisk humour, especially when Zuckerberg’s team coaches him on seeming less mechanical in public, or when Haugen mocks Horwitz’s weak grasp of technology, seemingly his only defining quality. But both strands become repetitive, and neither contains enough conflict. More awkwardly, they never really connect, since Zuckerberg has no meaningful encounter with either Horwitz or Haugen.

One central difficulty is that Facebook remains hugely powerful and Zuckerberg remains worth well over $200 billion. From the beginning, the audience knows there will be no triumphant, corporation-toppling ending in the manner of All the President’s Men. For all its thunderous title, then, The Social Reckoning offers surprisingly little reckoning.

The larger issue is that this subdued drama is not forceful enough to alter anyone’s view. It joins a recent run of films about ultra-wealthy technology and industry figures, including Alejandro G Iñárritu’s wild Tom Cruise project Digger, Alex Gibney’s confrontational Elon Musk documentary Musk, and Luca Guadagnino’s polished Sam Altman biopic Artificial. Yet Sorkin’s film is the softest and least daring of the group. It may hold your attention if it appears on television, although you could easily find yourself checking your phone at the same time.

★★☆☆☆