There is no denying Steven Spielberg is a technical wizard with an innate sense of where to place his camera for maximum impact in any carefully storyboarded sequence. Watching Disclosure Day, a sense of calm came over me as I was reminded that I was in the hands of a master of craft who knows how to make a real movie. But the further the story developed, the less engaged I became. This tale of whistleblowers striving to tell humanity that they are not alone gets lost in classic Spielberg sentimentality, but maybe audiences prefer that to the terrifying post-9/11 realism of War of the Worlds.
The film smartly begins in medias res, with our hero Daniel (Josh O’Connor) already on the run with the classified secrets he’s stolen from shady defense contractor company man Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) that reveal the existence of advanced alien life. Not only does it show definitive proof that little gray men are real, but the US government has been hiding it from humanity since Roswell and performing barbarous experiments on these beings. There’s a haunting amount of grainy alien snuff films in Daniel’s backpack, which he needs to bring to another defector (Colman Domingo, mostly acting as the voice of God – a role he’s well-suited for). They plan to broadcast these videos across the planet, changing history forever. At the same time, meteorologist Maggie Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has awakened strange pseudo-mind control powers, throwing her life into a tailspin and bringing her closer to Daniel.
Those powers are where I start to hop off Mr. Spielberg’s wild ride. Maggie’s childhood encounter with aliens have granted her a sort of “super empathy” which allows her to read the feelings of others, often comforting them about their troubles or appearing as their loved ones. It’s a less than graceful portrayal of these abilities, as it is usually Maggie saying things like “Your son needs you” to someone who starts crying. Blunt handles this well, imbuing her character with nervy energy when she’s lucid and real humor when she’s suddenly speaking Russian, but it comes across as silly more often than not. The divide between Maggie’s dilemma and Daniel’s harrowing car chases is stark. When they finally meet up, Daniel recedes into the background as Maggie takes center stage in this extraterrestrial journey, a bummer for us O’Connor heads. But Blunt has never been better, which softens the blow. Also locked in is Firth, whose mind-hopping executive spends much of the film hovering over our protagonists like a beast waiting to pounce.
The deeper we get into the climax, the more the film feels like The Post, or less generously, the episode of The Newsroom where they learn Bin Laden has been killed. While I admire Spielberg’s faith in legacy media and humanity’s ability to care about the truth, I’m not sure they’ll even care about this movie! I want to believe people would care about irrefutable evidence of alien life and the mistreatment thereof, but would they? Disclosure Day doesn’t go beyond this point, which shouldn’t be a shock from the title, but is still frustrating. The immediate aftermath could be more interesting, as the threat of WWII looms over the movie, but we won’t see it. It feels like Spielberg doesn’t quite know either, instead trying to leave us in amazement and wonder like he’s done many times before.
Disclosure Day
2026
dir. Steven Spielberg
145 min
In theaters Friday, June 12th with special 70mm screenings at Coolidge Corner Theatre!
