Disclosure Day should’ve been called Close Encounters of the Bored Kind
Disclosure Day is a film that feels like it should’ve come out in 2003 or something. It’s a very dated movie and a weirdly unemotional one — no one in the film seems capable of conveying actual humanity, which makes the film ironic on a couple of different levels. Factor in the ridiculous musical cues that make the Despicable Me movies seem subdued, the gratuitous (over) use of lens flare and some downright DREADFUL CGI effects and you have to ask the question: was this thing actually ghost-directed by M. Night Shyamalan?
Spielberg obviously has an iffy track record with sci-fi thrillers. Sure, he gave us E.T. back in the day, but his more recent output has been … underwhelming, to say the least. Whatever Close Encounters of the Third Kind is, Ready Player One is its exact opposite. I’ve seen some reviewers claim Disclosure Day is a happy return to form for the world’s most famous director, but I can only fathom WHAT movie they were watching other than this one. Disclosure Day, to put everything in a cozy little nutshell, is a supremely formulaic, unmoving, wannabe political thriller with wooden acting all around, replete with a third act “twist” that’s one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I’ve seen at the multiplex in ages. It feels more like a sub-standard USA network mini-series from 2005 than something helmed by the guy who gave us Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List.
I think the first place where the movie falls apart is its cast. You have a lot of big names here, but none of them act like … well, real actors. There’s this distant, robotic nature to the characters, to the point you really can’t sense anything different between our heroes and the villains. A lot of times, it feels like the supporting characters are more like NPCs in a video game — these plastic things in the background with no real autonomy of their own. If this is supposed to be Emily Blunt’s annual Oscar bid, all I can is she better keep her evening options open in mid-March 2027. Because that’s when the next Oscars ceremony is, you know.
The rest of the cast isn’t much better. We’ve got Josh O’Conner playing some hacker guy who knows the secret about alien lifeforms, with Eve Hewson playing his Hollywood-goth girlfriend (who used to be a nun, of all possible things — and yes, it is a prominent plot point in the film.) Colman Domingo later shows up as a government defector and we’ve got Colin Firth playing the big bad — which, in a total anomaly for a Spielberg movie, is the head of some shadowy government agency.
Emily Blunt’s character is supposed to carry the entire film, but as soon as she has her big wacky freakout during a morning talk show broadcast you kinda realize that she’s not up to the task. You know she has some sort of tragic backstory that’s kept mysterious for obvious reasons and she has some kind of telepathic power that’s totally unexplainable (until the last 30 minutes of the film, of course) but beyond that, pretty much all she does is stare wide-eyed into the camera, like she’s a deer staring down the headlights of an 18-wheeler. And speaking of deer, good grief, are the digital effects in this movie ASTONISHINGLY bad. Like, how is it even possible to make a BIRD look unrealistic and creepily inauthentic?
So yeah, the acting here is pretty lackluster. But what’s really surprising is how shoddy the DIRECTING is. There used to be a time when ANYTHING Big Steve directed was cancel-your-itinerary, be-there-on-opening-night-with-your-dancing-shoes-on, must-see cinema. Well, that hasn’t been the case for a couple of decades now. With Disclosure Day, it feels like we’re watching a director go through the motions and do the absolute bare minimum to earn a paycheck. I’ve seen enough terrible expensive movies and brilliant no-budget movies to tell when a filmmaker’s heart is in it and when it isn’t. And you can just sense that Spielberg wasn’t having a fun time making this film. It’s so derivative and paint by numbers that it almost feels like somebody making a parody of a Spielberg movie. It has all of the cliches and tropes, but none of the heart and effect.
I think there was SOME sort of attempt to turn Disclosure Day into a political parable. After all, it IS a movie that begins with the U.S., Russia and North Korea on the brink of World War III. Indeed, the basic plot is pretty much lifted from The Watchmen, with a gaggle of self-appointed messiahs trying to stave of doomsday by tossing the veil off all of this alien conspiracy stuff as a distraction tactic. Oddly enough, the movie doesn’t go anywhere NEAR the two biggest political livewires of the 2020s — the Trump presidency and the Israeli/Palestine crisis in Gaza — which seem like INTENTIONAL omissions in the grand scheme of things.
The other thing that really threw me off about the movie is its woefully inaccurate depiction of the American heartland. This is a film set in Kansas City, but it doesn’t look or sound anything like the REAL Kansas City. It paints an overly rosy depiction of “the real America” while completing glossing over its poverty, disease, depression, crumbling infrastructure and cultural rot. Pretty much the ONLY scene in the movie that got it right is a brief gag where you see a bunch of panicked people at a gas station peeing against the side of the building. Of course, you can go to parts of rural Missouri and see that right now, with or without the looming specter of doomsday on the horizon.
Of course, pretty much all of the discourse on Disclosure Day is going to focus on its third act. And to be fair, the third act IS the best part of the movie, however frustrating and unfocused it may be. It’s not a great movie, but the final ten minutes DO get pretty close to capturing the old school Spielberg magic. Without giving away too much if you haven’t seen it, let’s just say it’s a very well-done juxtaposition sequence that really should’ve been the entire movie. And then, just when it seems like the film has FINALLY crossed the Rubicon, it literally ends mid-sentence. I’m not sure what your theater’s reception was like, but if it DIDN’T involve at least two or three guys screaming “aww, that’s bull 💩!” at the same time, you probably deserve a refund.
Disclosure Day isn’t the worst movie of the year. In fact, it’s far from it. But when 2026 is all over, I can’t help but feel like we’ll be talking about this one as a candidate for the year’s most disappointing film. All of the ingredients were there, the film itself showed signs of promise and then it gnaws its own foot off right before our eyes (and ears.) It’s escapist cinema that points toward SOME kind of real world metaphor, but good luck figuring out what Spielberg’s intentions were here.
Ultimately, it feels like Steve and company missed the forest for the trees. Let’s be real, even IF alien life was confirmed by WikiLeaks or whatever, would it really change our daily life that much? Gee, that’s great that extra-terrestrials exist — now what are they going to do to help me get better dental insurance, gas that’s below $6 a gallon and an actual living wage?
There’s your movie, Steve. Not The Day The Earth Stood Still, but The Day The Earth Didn’t Give A Damn.
GIVE IT A WATCH IF YOU LIKE: War of the Worlds (the 2005 version, obviously), panic buying, those old Alien Autopsy TV specials
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: David Koepp
Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth
Studio: Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Language: English
Runtime: 145 Minutes
Release Date: June 12, 2026