Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day”
Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald
Watching Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day on a large theater screen, I could not help but think about Cixin Liu’s “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy, especially volume 2, “The Dark Forest.” What happens when people on Earth finally encounter an alien civilization, one whose technology is vastly superior to our own? Do we welcome them with open arms? Or do we view them as a threat?
Spielberg spins his tale very differently from Liu and from his own Close Encounters of the Third Kind. For example, instead of relating a mystery of people drawn from all over to a place where they can finally meet benevolent aliens, in Disclosure Day the aliens are already here, their existence and their technology hidden by a shadowy quasi-governmental high-tech firm that wants to prevent disclosure of their existence. That firm is opposed by a group of disaffected former employees that support a reveal of the alien presence.
That outline sounds like a pulpy sci-fi movie about a garden-variety struggle between the good guys and the bad guys. In Disclosure DaySpielberg takes the story in a different direction.
The aliens themselves aren’t the primary dramatic force; three people are. One is a Kansas City TV weather reporter played by Emily Blunt. The second is a disaffected employee who, upon witnessing his employer’s duplicity, defects; he is played by Josh O’Connor. The third is the head of the shadowy high-tech organization that wants to keep the aliens and their technology under wraps, played -- creepily -- by Colin Firth.
These three and their own personal relationships and backstories anchor the movie’s wild and weird events. There are chases, a mysterious construction project, spooky proximity to animals, a magical high-tech McGuffin that only a few humans know how to handle, a childhood experience filled with wonder and awe, and a series of single-take-appearing tracking shots that remind you that Spielberg is a master at orchestrating enveloping cinematic experiences.
Still, as fantastical and unlikely as the events are in Disclosure Day, Spielberg keeps us grounded throughout by focusing on the individuals and the stresses they experience as events careen towards a planned Disclosure Day that the forces of evil — led by Colin Firth’s character — are willing to do anything to prevent.
The action sequences in this film that typically take the shape of a hair-raising chase of some sort. But these are not the only high-stress situations. There are several telepathic sequences involving two people communicating using alien technology that are suspenseful and engrossing because of the personalities and issues involved.
Is the movie perfect? No. Some coincidences made me roll my eyes. These are few. Overall, the management of mystery and tension is masterful.
What impressed me most about the film is its mature treatment of serious themes. If we are not alone in the universe, are “they” good or bad? More importantly, how will their existence impact our daily lives?
As cinematic and action oriented as this film is, it does touch on some profoundly human issues that the mature Spielberg knows how to address — themes like religion, memory, loss, death, and the impacts of obsession. The aliens are not the issue, Spielberg is saying, it’s how we deal with what we see in the mirror they hold up to us.
Emotionally, Disclosure Day is closer to a film like Zemeckis’ Contact than to Spielberg’s own Close Encounters. It doesn’t deal with the theme of “what it means to be human” as does A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, nor does it attempt to relate complexities like language and temporal distortion like Villeneuve’s Arrival. All these films incorporate intense human and emotional conflicts without devolving into massive battles and violence that have become all too common in big-studio sci-fi films these days.
I look forward to a longer “director’s cut” of this film that adds more detail not only about the production but also some of the character detail and plot details that might have ended up being cut.
Review copyright (c) 2026 by Dennis D. McDonald. The original handwritten version of this review, which was scanned into and transcribed by ChatGPT and then manually edited by the author is here.
Summary of the above text created 6/19/26 by ChatGPT: “Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day begins with a familiar science-fiction question — how humanity would respond to contact with a technologically superior alien civilization — but the review argues that Spielberg’s real interest lies less in the aliens themselves than in the human beings forced to confront what their presence reveals. Unlike Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Cixin Liu’s darker “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” trilogy, the film centers on secrecy, institutional control, and the emotional consequences of disclosure, grounding its fantastical premise in three sharply drawn characters played by Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, and Colin Firth. While the story includes chases, mysterious technology, hidden alien knowledge, and Spielberg’s trademark cinematic orchestration, its strongest moments come from its management of mystery, tension, and character-driven suspense. The review sees the film as imperfect but mature, closer emotionally to Contact and Arrival than to action-heavy modern science fiction, because it uses alien contact not to stage massive battles but to examine how people respond to wonder, fear, mortality, faith, memory, and the unsettling mirror that alien intelligence holds up to humanity.”
