Film Review: “Disclosure Day” (Review #1 – Jeremy)

Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colin Firth
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 145 minutes
Universal Pictures

Our Score: 1.5 out of 5 Stars

It’s a grand return to the sci-fi genre for Steven Spielberg, the director that helped redefine the genre with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” However, “Disclosure Day” feels strangely disconnected from the sense of wonder that has made his work so compelling. Spielberg’s alien stories used to be fueled by curiosity. Here, curiosity is replaced by certainty. The film begins with the assumption that extraterrestrial life exists and that powerful interests have hidden that truth from the public. Fair enough. But then what?

That question kept following me throughout the film. If the government and corporations have been hiding the truth, why? What exactly are they protecting? What do the aliens want? Are they benevolent? Dangerous? Indifferent? What happens to religion, society, and everyday life when the greatest discovery in human history becomes public knowledge?

“Disclosure Day” raises all of these questions but rarely engages with them in a meaningful way. Instead, characters often react with awe and revelation while I found myself wondering what they were seeing that I wasn’t. I understood every plot beat, but I rarely felt them. The film somehow feels over-explained and underdeveloped at the same time, as if 40 minutes of crucial emotional and philosophical context were removed while all the unnecessary exposition remained.

To Spielberg’s credit, there are a few moments that work. Discussions about faith, humanity’s place in the universe, and our collective search for meaning hint at a more interesting movie buried beneath the surface. But the film never digs deep enough. “Close Encounters” told us to open our minds. We did. “Disclosure Day” tells us…nothing. It wants to explore truth, belief, and disclosure, yet it rarely moves beyond simply declaring that those things matter.

That’s ultimately where “Disclosure Day” lost me. The film spends more than two hours building toward a revelation, but it never fully explores why that revelation changes anything. A resistance movement forms because truth should be revealed. A conspiracy exists because truth should be hidden. Yet the film never convincingly explains the tension between those ideas. The “why” behind everything remains frustratingly out of reach even though it’s allegedly “Disclosure Day.”