Though bogged down by a talky and absurd screenplay that mechanises its ideas too rigidly into scene-to-scene plotting, this remains an interesting conspiracy thriller, where the outstanding technical craft and bigger thematic stakes help Spielberg make the landing somewhat stick.
Review #3,087
Dir. Steven Spielberg
2026 | USA | Sci-Fi, Thriller | 145min | 2.39:1 | English
PG13 (passed clean) for action/violence, some bloody images and strong language.
Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson
Plot: A cybersecurity expert becomes a whistleblower to reveal secrets about aliens, putting him on the run from a corporation, while a meteorologist experiences strange phenomena and joins forces with him to prove there’s life beyond our knowledge.
Awards: –
Distributor: United International Pictures
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Truth & Deception; Aliens on Earth
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Normal
Audience Type: Mainstream
Viewed: Shaw Theatres Lido
Spoilers: No
The best thing about Disclosure Day is not the film itself, but that composer John Williams, just six years shy of 100, has delivered a full-blown score (which will surely earn him his 55th Oscar nomination), built upon a stirring central theme that is hopeful yet melancholy, and embellished with pulsating thriller rhythms that will be familiar to his longtime fans.
It’s old-school film scoring for an old-school picture that completes Steven Spielberg’s unofficial trilogy about aliens that started with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).
Kudos to the master filmmaker for not treading similar ground, though some might be disappointed that it is not exactly an awe-inspiring “sci-fi”-type film, but more of a conspiracy thriller.
It’s more of the intrigue of Minority Report (2002) than the bombast of War of the Worlds (2005), but it’s also bits and pieces of other movies in Spielberg’s extensive filmography—for example, a tonally out-of-place “Hansel & Gretel” sequence could have been something out of The Fabelmans (2022) and The BFG (2016) at the same time.
“Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know.”
A schizophrenic work, bogged down by a far too talky and occasionally absurd screenplay from David Koepp, Disclosure Day has big, interesting ideas, but ones that are too rigidly “mechanised” into scene-to-scene plotting that the grand themes of truth, deception, faith, and revelation become somewhat muddled. Still, Spielberg, with all of his visual storytelling bravura, manages to make the landing somewhat stick.
Emily Blunt and Eve Hewson are excellent as distressed women hoping for situational clarity, but I find the prominent male characters (played by Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, and Colman Domingo) rather one-note and difficult to connect with. Believe it or not, even a random female newscaster in the climax, who’s barely onscreen for no more than a minute, has more to offer emotionally.
So, really, Disclosure Day is a mixed bag, but still more interesting and entertaining than any of the run-of-the-mill thrillers that get lost in streaming algorithms.
If you can shrug off its shortcomings, and focus more on the outstanding technical craft and the bigger stakes of faith-shattering disclosures, then the film should at least make you think: what if one day we have something of that sort, not necessarily in the realm of “aliens are real” (this doesn’t shock me anyway if true), but something more grounded—politically, culturally, socially, technologically—that upends humanity’s entrenched beliefs?
Grade: B
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 