“If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you?”
Given Steven Spielberg’s brilliant catalog of films including classics like Jaws, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, it felt right to go and see Disclosure Day on the big screen. It’s actually the first time I’ve seen a Spielberg film at the cinema, so I was quite excited. Going in to Disclosure Day, I was expecting an otherworldly film full of extraterrestrial discoveries and how the world would react to such developments. While there are strong sci-fi elements, Disclosure Day is more of a chase thriller film about an ongoing government conspiracy to hide the knowledge of alien life and how aliens have in fact visited Earth.
Spielberg wastes no time getting straight into it as we are introduced to Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity analyst who is now on the run from secret organisation Wardex, with a cryptic mystery device, accompanied by his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) who isn’t totally clued up on Daniel’s past, but she hasn’t exactly filled him in on hers either. Shortly after an intense exchange between Daniel and Wardex, we are taken to Kansas City where we meet Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a quirky TV meteorologist who is getting ready for work when after a strange encounter with a red cardinal, suddenly possesses psychic skills and the ability to speak every language. It’s a pretty packed first act, and it definitely got me hooked. The second act remained strong, but by the end things started to taper off a bit and the film became an array of disjointed ideas with no real payoff.
Spoilers below…
Emily Blunt was brilliant in this, and I could honestly watch a whole film just focussing on Margaret’s newly found psychic powers, imagine a version of this movie that steered more towards her being a passage of communication between humanity and the extra-terrestrial. I feel that would make more sense given the emphasis put on the communication specific powers bestowed upon Daniel and Margaret, so it is odd to me that the marketing of this movie was so heavily centred on it being about what would happen if “the truth” was disclosed to humanity, then the movie itself being more of a chase between a whistleblower and a secret government organisation.
The film is packed with gripping scenes and a perfect score to match, we are shown all the sci-fi tropes such as crop circles, a cryptic otherworldly device, strange creatures on classified tapes, and all of this combined kept me wondering whats next, but unfortunately it doesn’t really go anywhere. The entire premise revolves around Daniel revealing the truth to mankind, but his methods feel a little dated; it’s 2026 and he opted to reveal this via it being televised on a local news channel. This felt even more like a strange choice when we are shown the whole world stopping to look at their own personal all-encompassing-information devices, I mean, their phones… What I’m trying to say is, in a world where we are all so glued to our phones all the time, wouldn’t it have made more sense to leak this information via the internet? After all, that is how we all stay connected. Then again, I suppose we are also in an era of “fake news”, so maybe that’s where the internet leak objection came from.
One thing that really bothered me was the alien design. In the past decade we have seen so many fresh takes on what cosmic creatures could look like, such as the heptapods from Arrival (2016), the creepers from Mickey 17 (2025) and Rocky from Project Hail Mary (2026). However, in Disclosure Day, Spielberg opts for the default “little green man” design, which completely took me out of my immersion, I couldn’t take it seriously as it’s been done so many times now. Since the whole film is based off of how the world would react to the shocking revelation of alien existence, there would have been more gravity to this if the design erred more on the side of a life-form beyond human comprehension. I wanted to see something truly bizarre and unfathomable, rather than a very dated perception of aliens.
The final scene of the world coming to a stop, despite being on the verge of WW3, simply to witness the Disclosure Day broadcast was a profound scene and puts into perspective how small humanity is in the greater scheme of things. The message of empathy being the true advantage amongst humankind and beyond would have been more impactful if the film didn’t end so abruptly. We are asked to listen, but not given anything to listen to, so for me it just fell flat.
Overall, Disclosure Day does not disappoint when it comes to stunning cinematography, thrilling action sequences, and amazing lead performances. I don’t regret seeing this in the cinema at all as the visuals truly are remarkable and the big screen experience really allowed me to immerse fully into what Spielberg has crafted. A film surrounding the disclosure of something that is so widely speculated in reality is an ambitious choice, I just wish the consequences of such revelation were explored more. We are asked how we would react to proof we are not alone, but the film doesn’t really answer this at all. If you liked Nope (2022), Arrival (2016) or Spielberg’s other alien-centric works, this is the film for you.