Disclosure Day Review: Nobody Does This Better Than Steven Spielberg

If asked to think about the science fiction films of Steven Spielberg, chances are you'll find yourself instinctively looking up. The feeling most associated with that in his work is wonder: a team of scientists dwarfed by an impossibly large, musical mothership; Elliott and E.T. soaring across the face of the moon; Laura Dern and Sam Neill gaping at the sight of living, breathing Brachiosaurus. When facing down a T. rex or an alien tripod, it feels more like horror; when filtered through the gaze of a lost synthetic child, eternally yearning for his mother's love, it's something closer to deep melancholy. But whatever the tone, no one tilts the camera upward in awe quite like Spielberg.

Disclosure Day, the director's return to blockbuster sci-fi after nearly a decade, is filled with shots of Spielbergian wonder – but our gaze is pointed elsewhere. This movie is made for a world that has us spending most of our time looking down, whether metaphorically, heads buried in our own work and struggles, or literally, absorbed by the phones that have overtaken our lives. As if watching the skies is too big an ask in that context, Spielberg instead uses all his directorial power to encourage us to look at each other.

The result is another great film in a career filled with them. Structured like a thriller with a propulsiveness worthy of Indiana Jones, Disclosure Day is an attempt to meet this cynical, divided moment and treat it with empathy, as well as with a healthy dose of good, ol' fashioned entertainment. As with all great sci-fi, it's both gripping and thought-provoking. For those able to turn themselves over to its wavelength, it's also quite moving. A true summer blockbuster of the kind that only Spielberg can deliver, worth not only seeing (on the biggest screen you can find), but cherishing.

Disclosure Day's Cast Shines, But Emily Blunt Shines Brightest

Aside from the fact that it's about exposing a decades-long cover-up of the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth, the marketing for Disclosure Day has been cagey about what's actually going on in this movie. From the first few minutes, it's easy to see why. There is no table-setting prologue to introduce the characters or acclimate us to this world. The story begins in media res, throwing us into a heist of highly classified material that's already well underway. Everything we learn about who these characters are, what's happening to them, and why, must be slowly sussed out, pulled from dialogue or inferred from context.

The approach does make me reluctant to reveal anything but the most basic character setup; the learning is part of the fun. What's more important, anyway, is why Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp, a frequent collaborator, chose to start Disclosure Day this way. Though the director has talked about drawing on his personal passion for the search for extraterrestrial life, the same passion that led to Close Encounters of the Third Kind almost 50 years ago, that manifests less in the plot specifics than as a burning need to ask questions and discover the answers. This film's narrative structure lights and stokes that same fire in us, banking on its third-act moments of revelation being enough to satisfy it.

A story like that might typically stuff its cast with actors who excel in being enigmatic and withholding, but with one notable exception, Disclosure Day is filled with emotionally open performances. Josh O'Connor, who has yet to be used on-screen in a way that doesn't work, is our thief: Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity expert who worked at the nefarious Wardex corporation until he made off with their full archive of secrets. Colman Domingo plays Hugo, a fellow Wardex defector and Daniel's primary contact. By the time we meet them, Daniel's girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) has inadvertently been roped in, her life now in danger.

At the same time, in Kansas City, TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is trying to sort out her life. She wants to audition for news anchor proper; she's considering yet another cross-country move, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell). But that morning, as they're talking things through, a cardinal flies through their open window and onto their table. Everything changes for Maggie the moment she looks at it. Before long, as you've no doubt seen in the movie's earliest trailer, she's making unearthly clicking sounds on live television.

O'Connor, Domingo, and Hewson are all very easy to connect to as actors, and Spielberg makes great use of that quality in Disclosure Day. Each is essential to the particular combination of cynicism and hopefulness that defines this movie. But what Emily Blunt does here is on another level. She has the most difficult task of any performer in the film, and she nails it, routinely the most captivating part of any scene she's in. Her journey from seeing the cardinal to that already-viral newscast, punctuated by a classic Spielberg oner, had me practically levitating out of my seat.

In stark contrast to his fellow castmates is Colin Firth as Scanlon, the head of Wardex and the film's primary antagonist. He wears a thin mask of controlled authority covering a well of barely repressed rage, which slips out should anyone so much as compassionately touch his shoulder. Scanlon is a perversion of everything the heroes stand for, and Firth must embody the cost of withholding all this knowledge from the public. For someone who is so often sympathetic on screen, he is remarkably well-equipped to do so.

Disclosure Day's Old-Fashioned Charm Works Wonders – If You Let It

As much as Spielberg's film is informed by many of today's concerns, ranging from the specter of technological surveillance to the zeitgeist-defining feeling that everything is falling apart around us, Disclosure Day is amusingly old-fashioned. It revisits the most traditional of alien visitation tropes, ones upended in Jordan Peele's Nope just a few years ago, and treats them as if they're still groundbreaking. It grapples with the potential impact of this information on people's faith in the world order, as if there's much of that to go around these days. And it's naively confident that the public at large will believe what proof is shared with them, let alone react to it as a fundamental change in their understanding of reality.

For some, I'd imagine this trait will feel limiting, perhaps even distancing. But for others, myself among them, this strain of sincerity is what unlocks the movie. Spielberg has returned to alien sci-fi because he sees the human race is lost down a dark, splintered path, and an extraterrestrial intervention is his way of bringing us the unifying solution. He consciously invokes the entertainment of our childhoods, the wonder he himself has brought us, and challenges us to let that feeling in again – to actually believe that the willingness to connect with the person next to us could change the world.

The film itself approaches this idea with some caution; there is a restraint in both the visuals and John Williams' score compared to the emotional swells of Spielberg's classics. But that's less reflective of a lack of faith on the director's part than an underlying fear this message will fall on deaf ears. Disclosure Day believes it, and asks us to believe it, too. If you're willing to embrace that perspective wholeheartedly, even if just until the lights come up in your theater, you'll find the film's ending as affecting as it is riveting.

Disclosure Day releases in theaters nationwide on Friday, June 12.

Release Date June 12, 2026

Runtime 145 Minutes

Cast

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  Josh O'Connor

  Daniel Kellner