Written By Mauricio Segura // Image courtesy of Universal Pictures
Do not go into Disclosure Day expecting some grand, glowing sci-fi adventure with a giant John Williams score soaring over every scene like E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That movie shows up eventually, but not right away. For most of its 2-hour, 25-minute run, Steven Spielberg is working in spy-thriller mode, with UFO secrets, government shadows, whistleblowers, fear, and paranoia doing most of the heavy lifting. The extraterrestrial stuff is there, but it comes sprinkled in like Parmesan on spaghetti instead of being the entire plate. The final 40 minutes are closer to what many people probably expected the entire film to be. Taking that into account, the film works best when viewed as Spielberg blending two of his favorite toys: the wide-eyed wonder of looking up at the stars and the very human panic of realizing somebody down here has been lying about what’s up there.
The story follows Daniel Kellner, played by Josh O’Connor, a cybersecurity professional who becomes a fugitive after trying to expose hidden proof about alien life. That pulls him into a dangerous chase involving Wardex, a shadowy private contractor led by Colin Firth’s Noah Scanlon. At the same time, Emily Blunt’s Margaret Fairchild, a Missouri meteorologist, begins experiencing strange abilities that connect her to the larger mystery.
Blunt gives the film its heartbeat. Margaret is not written like a superhero or a chosen-one cliché. She feels like a normal person whose life gets hijacked by something too big to explain without sounding too improbable. O’Connor brings nervous urgency to Daniel, making him less of a slick action hero and more of a man who kicked open a locked door and immediately realized there were wolves on the other side.
Spielberg still knows how to build tension. The best scenes have that old-school “lean forward in your seat” rhythm, where a hallway, a train, or a quiet room can suddenly feel dangerous. The movie also looks polished without becoming too shiny. It has the clean, serious feel of a modern conspiracy drama, not a toy-store version of alien contact.
The downside is that Disclosure Day asks for patience, and not everyone will want to give it. Some stretches feel like the film is circling the runway when you’re ready for it to land. But when it finally opens up, the payoff has real wonder.
This is not Spielberg’s most magical alien movie, but it is a thoughtful, tense, and surprisingly human one. It is less about little green men and more about what humans do when the truth stops knocking and forces the door in.
Disclosure Day: 7/10
