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You Can't Leave | Tickets & Showtimes Near Me
Redemption code: ATOMLEAVE
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A search for a missing friend turns into a supernatural nightmare. In a dark forest, an abandoned cabin hides an ancient evil. As night falls, friends must survive pursuit, escape the shadows, and uncover the truth before it's too late.
“We’re way past making friends.”
The 500 million friends from “The Social Network” (2010) seem quaint now. With nearly billion users in 2019, Facebook (now Meta) appears unstoppable. Its reach far and wide through the corners of the globe. The good, the bad, the ugly – all of it.
The brilliant Aaron Sorkin has totally taken the helm and steered the gigantic social media shipwreck story.
“The Social Reckoning” opens the film with a routine traffic stop that turns riveting with hostility. When you visualize the term “radicalized,” this is an incredible illustration of it.
Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a young data scientist at Facebook, is a part of the Civic Integrity team, tasked with monitoring global risks and mitigating misinformation, fake news and harmful propaganda.
Frances has gradually discovered disturbing data about what Facebook is doing, at the same time that investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), began sniffing around, as the country is approaching election year 2020.
When there’s smoke, there’s fire? This is a combustible one, like playing kerosene with matches.
The two meet in secret – from one initial meeting where Frances is filled with fear, then reluctance and hesitancy, to bolder and riskier, and eventually became a full-blown participant.
Frances believes in Facebook’s mission that they are doing the world good by giving people a voice and connecting them, as well as democratizing access. Especially for introverts or socially awkward ones, where they could be themselves behind the screen and make friends.
Frances proclaims over and over that she loves her job, and that she wants to help Facebook, not hurt it, but she could not calm her conscience. She’s acutely aware that she’s violating her employment NDA and could potentially go to prison for her actions - for photographing thousands of pictures of confidential trade secret documents, essentially stealing company property and going up against one of the most powerful corporations and richest men in the world.
Frances relays that a highly alarming percentage of users who have been directed to join extremist groups come from Facebook’s own algorithms. Then MSI (Meaningful Social Interactions) is another method, which is driven to increase engagement by altering the algorithms to value likes 5x, comments 15x and reshares 30x.
What’s the number one emotion and what kinds of posts that would push people to reshare? Anger. Rage-bait posts. And Facebook senior leaders knew full well.
With the consequential U.S. presidential election and global COVID colliding, so are false narratives, inflammatory comments, bullying pages, hate speech, and extremist recruitment.
On the mental health front, teens have also been universally impacted by excessive social media use designed for endless scrolling, causing poor body image, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideations. Facebook is also being used by drug cartels and human traffickers.
The behind-the-scenes media and political coaching of Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong, mimicking stiff-looking and tight-lipped Zuck) are animated, egged on by investor-turned-critic Charlie Garrigan (Bill Burr) after the fallout of their relationship, while crisis PR strategist Raya Akinola (Wunmi Mosaku) is doing her darndest to humanize Zuckerberg and present himself in a favorable light under congressional microscope.
At what point should a social media corporation draw the hard digital lines between free speech and intervention by censoring comments? Is it only when there’s an imminent harm? How imminent and how would you define that? How could a company fact-check political ads and mass dissemination of news racing across the world with lightning speed?
The scenes of the capitol insurrection and Facebook chief’s decision-making surrounded by live feed all around are tensely intercut and unfolding in real time.
How can ONE person make a global impact and at scale? By inflicting pain that hurts, combined with the power of the press. And that, is a force to be reckoned with. Frances throws the whistleblower gauntlet and takes a strong stand with her conviction in a David vs Goliath showdown.
Putting growth at all costs over safety guardrails, profit-over-people Facebook has caused widespread polarization and stoked division, leading to life-and-death situations. The Facebook Files are now open to the public.
In true Sorkin’s fashion, “The Social Reckoning” is sharply written with rapid-fire dialogue, counting down war room parallel scenes, and provocative themes with no clean solutions.
While not quite reaching “The Social Network's” stellar bar, “The Social Reckoning” is a solid companion, engaging and thought-provoking piece.
Atom is providing FREE movie screening nationwide for today, October 10, 2026.
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Trust Me, I'm a Doctor | Tickets & Showtimes Near MeRedemption code: ATOMTRUSTME
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The story of Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, whose life is turned upside down when he is implicated in the death of his former patient, model and reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith.
"The truth depends on who's telling it.”
If “Verity” reminds of you of last year’s wildly mind-blowing, “The Housemaid,” you’d be right.
Similar components are there – a young woman moving into a wealthy family’s home and there’s a potential affair between the outsider and the husband.
With a dash of “Gone Girl,” there may be another thing or two elements in this Colleen Hoover’s adopted novel that might bear similarity to the other films, but that’s about it. The way the story flashes back and progresses is vividly different.
Vivid is an emphasis here, because the wife and world-renowned author, Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway; “The Devil Wears Prada,” “The End of Oak Street”) is in catatonic state due to a car accident.
The story is told from Verity’s hidden memoir manuscript, “So Be It,” as read by the Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson, “Materialists”). The words (voiced by Hathaway) fly off the screen vividly, so darkly descriptive and sensationally salacious.
It does beg the question how famous crime fiction writers could creatively come up with stuff terrifyingly twisted, such as writing stories from the villain’s viewpoints. Is it purely from their imaginations or something else in their psyche?
Talented Lowen is a far lesser-known author, who has written in the similar genre, and has been invited by the publisher to ghostwrite the rest of Verity’s unfinished, profitable book series, “Noble Virtues.”
Lowen is staying in the Verity’s and her husband’s, Jeremy’s (Josh Hartnett), luxurious lakeside house in Vermont, since Verity has a lot of materials scattered in her home office prior to the crash.
The picturesque wintry setting and distinctively designed house is its own character, lending itself to a noir story and jump scares.
Located by a frozen lake with falling snow all around, the sprawling mid-century modern house is dazzlingly dominated by warm woods, with sunken shelves, brick walls, wood panel-covered refrigerator, stone sinks and tub adorning parts of the house.
The lurid manuscript starts from the beginning, where Verity and Jeremy first met at a party, how their chemistry-packed relationship took off right away to where Jeremy asked Verity to move in with him and asked her to marry him during, voiced with intrigue and shown with lascivious details, and not bloodlessly. Then how Verity first became a writer, pregnant with their twin babies, and caring for them once they were born. The attraction and obsession were palpable.
If you guess these are all mundane milestones, you’d be wrong. The scenes seductively pull you in little by little, until you’re sucked into a shocking vortex, gasping with startling realizations. And when you think you’ve figured it out, a triple twist come out slashing.
The troubling, penultimate scenes will make you challenge reality and the head-spinning ending question which unsettling version of the story is true.
The film does require you to suspend disbelief for an extended period, but if you’re game, you’d be disturbingly entertained.
“Verity” lacks the intensity and campily entertaining element of “The Housemaid,” but the psychological thriller’s what ifs? are unnervingly fun to think and imagine.
Who’s manipulating who? Who would you believe? What would you have done? And what would you do?
For a character and movie named “Verity,” don’t believe everything you see and hear! What’s fiction might be real and what’s real might be fiction.
