(Warning: general spoilers ahead)
Steven Spielberg invented the summer blockbuster. He put alien movies on the map. So you’d expect Disclosure Day to be his most inspired take on extraterrestrial life yet. It isn’t. But it’s not for lack of ambition.
The film opens with Daniel Kellnar, a cyber savant determined to expose proof that “we are not alone.” A rogue agency, one the government doesn’t even know exists, is determined to stop him. His girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson), a former nun, goes on the run with him. Meanwhile, TV weather reporter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is struggling to make sense of alien-like sounds escaping her lips and omniscient thoughts flooding her mind.
Frantic chase scenes and unbelievable stunt work follow. A car-meets-train sequence has you gripping your seat, until it stretches so long it tips into comedy. Chases are interrupted repeatedly by clunky exposition dumps, with characters delivering long monologues about backstory and motivation that bring momentum to a grinding halt.
Hunting our heroes is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who telegraphs his villainy through an all-black wardrobe, head to toe. His army of henchmen and henchwomen match the dress code, driving black cars to secret black buildings, presumably with black underwear to complete the ensemble. Helping our heroes is a defector (the always watchable Coleman Domingo) who walked away from Scanlon’s operation because, frankly, Scanlon was a terrible boss. This subplot could have been resolved in an HR meeting.
The single best thing about Disclosure Day is Emily Blunt. She is acting circles around a clunker of a script. Her flighty on-air persona is now wrestling with the ability to read minds, and watching her negotiate that collision is genuinely riveting. Pulled over for speeding through Kansas City, she wriggles out of a ticket by telling the officer exactly how to solve his most private, unknowable problems. It’s a scene that works entirely because Blunt makes it work.
Josh O’Connor and the rest of the cast are eminently watchable but are dragged down by a story where characters simply don’t behave like human beings do. A newsroom crew reacts to a violent takeover (and far more fantastical events) with an “oh gee, another weird day at the office” shrug. Firth’s Scanlon deploys sophisticated alien technology to track his prey in one scene, then relies on bumbling thugs to carry out his orders in the next. The first rule at henchman school: stand in formation behind your boss while he monologues. They’re malevolent agents of menace one minute, foiled by Home Alone-level trickery the next.
With an unlimited budget, Spielberg brings creatures to life in the least convincing way possible. Foxes, deer, and other woodland creatures are rendered with such an uncanny valley quality that any sense of wonder they’re meant to inspire evaporates. When aliens are revealed, you’d have no idea that visual effects technology has progressed since 1977.
The disclosure itself arrives through a legacy media, small-market TV news studio broadcasting to the world. Does this feel anything like 2026? Only if you’re eligible for an AARP card. Social media is the channel. Mobile is the platform. Deep fake skepticism the norm. But not here. One bright spot: former real-life news anchor Courtney Grace earns every second of her one minute of screen time. Her on-air reaction to disclosure is supremely riveting, a sharp contrast to the shrug the rest of the room offers.
The film’s most audacious premise is asking us to accept a world where Close Encounters, E.T., and War of the Worlds simply don’t exist. We’re asked to believe culture hasn’t been alien-obsessed for 50 years, despite the fact that Spielberg himself made us that way. It’s a premise that collapses under the weight of its own irony.
Should Spielberg get a pass? He’s the most influential director of the 20th century. But Disclosure Day mostly rehashes old themes rather than expanding them. When it does attempt something genuinely new, it offers a throwaway line and moves on to the next cliched plot point. Audiences want more. We expect more from one of the greats.
See it for Blunt and a handful of tremendous set pieces. But you’ll spend most of it wondering where the wonder went.
7 out of 10
Jim Chandler is a morning radio host on Nashville’s Totally Hits 93.3 and a member of the Music City Film Critics Association.
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