Review: Disclosure Day

Steven Spielberg has spent nearly fifty years looking to the stars. From the awe-struck obsession of Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the childlike wonder of E.T. and the terror of War of the Worlds, extraterrestrials have long served as a vessel for the filmmaker’s deepest anxieties, hopes, and questions about humanity. With Disclosure Day, Spielberg returns to that well once again, this time asking a provocative question: If humanity learned we weren’t alone, would we be able to handle the truth?

It’s a fascinating premise. Unfortunately, Disclosure Day is far more interested in answering that question than interrogating it.

The film follows Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a fugitive who has escaped a secretive defense contractor called Wardex with evidence proving not only the existence of alien life, but decades of contact between extraterrestrials and humanity. Pursued by Wardex founder Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), Daniel crosses paths with Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a Kansas City meteorologist whose increasingly bizarre encounters with alien phenomena place her at the center of the same conspiracy. Together, they race to expose the truth before powerful interests can stop them.

As pure filmmaking, Disclosure Day is frequently exhilarating. Spielberg remains one of cinema’s great visual storytellers, and even at this stage of his career he can orchestrate sequences with a fluidity and confidence that younger directors spend entire careers chasing. Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography is predictably gorgeous, finding beauty in everything from windswept Midwestern landscapes to shadowy industrial facilities bathed in alien light. There are shots here that will linger in your memory long after the details of the plot have faded.

For roughly the first hour, the film works remarkably well. Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp throw viewers directly into the middle of the mystery, allowing questions to pile up faster than answers. The pacing is brisk, the stakes feel tangible, and the conspiracy at the heart of the story remains genuinely intriguing.

Then the film begins to reveal what it’s actually interested in, and that’s where things start to unravel.

The central problem with Disclosure Day is that nobody meaningfully questions the premise. Once the existence of extraterrestrial life is established, skepticism effectively disappears from the narrative. Daniel believes. Margaret believes. Hugo (Colman Domingo) believes. Even most of the supposed opposition seems less interested in denying the truth than controlling it.

The film desperately needs an Ian Malcolm.

One of the reasons Jurassic Park works so well is that Jeff Goldblum’s chaos theorist constantly challenges the assumptions of everyone around him. He serves as a necessary counterweight to the wonder. Without him, the film would simply be a collection of people excited that dinosaurs exist. In Disclosure Day, there is no equivalent voice asking whether disclosure is actually a good idea, whether humanity is prepared for it, or whether the consequences might be catastrophic.

As a result, the film gradually loses dramatic tension. There is little ideological conflict because everyone eventually arrives at the same conclusion. The question ceases to be whether disclosure should happen and becomes merely how quickly it can occur.

That lack of tension extends to the characters themselves. O’Connor and Blunt are both excellent performers, doing admirable work with material that often feels frustratingly thin. We learn fragments of their histories through hurried exposition and emotional monologues, but neither character is developed enough for the film’s emotional climax to land with the force Spielberg clearly intends.

The further the story progresses, the stranger the protagonists become. As exterrestrial influence over their lives increases, Daniel and Margaret begin performing increasingly implausible feats that border on superheroics. Chase sequences and action scenes unfold with such narrative protection around them that genuine suspense evaporates. The film suggests they are being guided by higher powers, but the practical effect is that they start feeling invulnerable.

And if the audience believes the heroes cannot fail, it’s difficult to worry about what happens next.

What’s frustrating is that Spielberg occasionally hints at a far more interesting movie. News broadcasts warn of looming global conflict. Society appears to be teetering on the edge of chaos. Religious faith, government secrecy, media responsibility, and public trust all hover around the edges of the story. Yet the film rarely explores any of these ideas with meaningful depth because it remains locked inside a narrative framework that treats alien disclosure as an unquestioned moral good.

This unwavering earnestness ultimately becomes both the film’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

Spielberg’s belief in empathy as a force capable of healing humanity has fueled some of his finest work. Here, however, that belief feels less like a theme being explored than a conclusion already reached. Disclosure Day wants desperately to convince us that revelation will bring unity, understanding, and transcendence. What it never fully wrestles with is the possibility that it might not.

Even so, dismissing the film would be impossible. The craft on display is extraordinary. John Williams delivers another sweeping score. Kamiński’s images are breathtaking. Spielberg remains capable of creating moments of wonder that few filmmakers can rival.

But for all its visual grandeur and thematic ambition, Disclosure Day never quite escapes the gravitational pull of its own certainty. It asks whether humanity can handle the truth. The more interesting question is whether the film can handle doubt.

2.5/5