David Fincher's direction creates just the right intensity and claustrophobia for a story that takes place largely in a stupefying male environment at Harvard University in 2003, shown in flashback from various acrimonious legal proceedings. Here, computer-science student Zuckerberg has the same sense of entitlement and self-congratulation as everyone else but combined with social resentment about being barred from snobby fraternities and clubs. When his girlfriend Erica (Rooney Mara) breaks up with him, the director shows how the emotionally wounded Zuckerberg embarks on a retaliatory campaign not far from the sinister world of Fincher's serial-killer films Se7en and Zodiac.