Oscar-winning filmmaker Steven Spielberg is back in the science fiction realm, once again dealing with aliens for the first time in 20 years, after making bona fide classics like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extraterrestrial. His newest film, Disclosure Day, is a movie borne out of his own ideas for what an “alien invasion” movie might look like in 2026, once again working with screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Jurassic World Rebirth) to tell the story of a number of individuals who are privy to a deeply-guarded secret about extraterrestrials being real and living on earth with physical proof of same.
At the heart of the story is Josh O’Connor’s Daniel Kellner – I only learned later that he’s a doctor and presumably a scientist, because neither is mentioned ONCE in the movie – who has stolen some data from the company where he works, called Wardex. The head of that company, Noah Scanlon (played by Colin Firth – maybe he’s also a doctor or scientist or an FBI agent, as that’s never quite clear), has kidnapped Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) to get that information back. At the same time, a Kansas City weather person, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), has begun to experience strange behavior, speaking in foreign languages and such. Another important part of the story is Colman Domingo’s Noah, who also might be a doctor or scientist, but he’s also a former Wardex employee who went rogue. Who knows? He just kind of appears throughout the movie to help Daniel escape with the data in order to reveal it to the general public on… (wait for it)... DISCLOSURE DAY!
I want to point out something important about my review above, as well as some of my comments on X (a few of them being meant as jokes), I’m sure some of those out there who feel it’s their job to “criticize the critics” will hear my rant at the start of my video review, and think, “Ed clearly went into this movie with knives out.”
Nope! I actually was in a mostly great mood when I showed up at the theater, having had a nice meal with my pal Tom (who you can thank if you like the better quality of my video stuff lately). I wasn’t nearly as annoyed as others (including Tom) about standing in line outside in the heat and humidity for 30 minutes before getting in to see the movie. What got me riled up was the actual movie, and the fact that a great filmmaker I’ve always liked and respected had made a movie that had so many issues at its core, that it left me in a very bad mood indeed. And THEN, I had to deal with all sorts of BS trying to get home to record my video review while still fresh… which I had to do around 10:30pm last night, because Universal didn’t feel the need to screen the movie earlier for anyone outside of their “special people.”
I also should point out that I could very well have gone through Disclosure Day’s plot point by plot point to further explain the many problems I had with it, as MANY of my colleagues have done with other, far better movies. I have always tried my best not to spoil the movie experience for those who might read/watch my reviews before seeing a movie, and if I went into greater detail about the problems with the BASIC STORY – I’m not even talking about the movie’s problems with pacing, visual effects, characters, and other aspects – I would not want anyone to read or watch my review. Maybe I’ll do a spoiler review later talking about all of those obvious issues, but for now, you’re getting an annoyed late-night video review where I try to be vague and talk about the movie using generalizations, and you can tell that I’m getting angrier and angrier as I talk about it.
It’s easy to figure out how and why Disclosure Day was greenlit – I mean, c’mon, it’s Spielberg doing aliens with David Koepp? It should sell itself, and it probably did, but the results are so chaotic on every level, that someone at Universal should have realized this. And who knows? Maybe someone did, and that’s why they were clearly trying to hide the movie from critics. Ultimately, Spielberg has made the most inaccessible, tedious, and obvious movies about alien life of his entire career.
Rating: 5.5/10
Disclosure Day comes on Friday, June 12.
