OVERVIEW
Disclosure Day finds Steven Spielberg returning, for the first time in over twenty years, to his oldest and dearest fascination: the encounter “of the third kind.” Set in an anxious, present-day America, the film imagines a government that has known the aliens are real for about eighty years and has kept the proof hidden through a shadowy agency called WARDEX. The cybersecurity expert on the inside, Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), thinks information this big should not remain hidden from the world, so he smuggles the evidence out of the facility and escapes with the help of a handful of co-workers who have had a similar change of heart. At the same time, Kansas City meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) begins experiencing strange episodes that tie her directly to what WARDEX has spent decades burying. Terrified of what disclosure would do, WARDEX chases the two of them down, desperate to stop “disclosure day” from ever happening.
BACKGROUND
Now 79 and coming off The Fabelmans, basically his autobiography put on screen, Spielberg leans further into late-career mode, positioning Disclosure Day as a “closing of the loop” he opened back in 1977 with Close Encounters, the film he has long called one of his most personal and the conversation he seems most interested in continuing. His collaborators are all back, from screenwriter David Koepp, who wrote Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds, to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, to, most notably, the 94-year-old John Williams, who agreed only after suggesting four other composers, each of whom Spielberg waved off, telling him it had to be him. And yet, even with maybe the most recognizable name of any living director, Spielberg is no longer enough to fill a theater on his own in 2026. After a run of box-office disappointments, selling the film has meant hitting the podcast circuit, sitting with Michelle Obama on IMO, and turning up at TikTok’s headquarters to court Gen Z. But in a doomscrolling society that can barely agree on what is real, does anyone still care about alien encounters?
THE REVIEW
This, it turns out, is exactly what Spielberg wants to explore. All previous Spielberg alien movies have doubled as portraits of their decade’s American anxieties. Close Encounters came out of post-Watergate distrust, E.T. channeled Reagan-era suburban loneliness, and War of the Worlds carried the panic of a post-9/11 nation. Disclosure Day continues that trend, functioning as Spielberg’s attempt to wrestle with an age in which the wonder that fueled so much of his work has drained away, replaced by suspicion, exhaustion, and the safety of our own corners. How would a society like ours react to a revelation like this, one whose first instinct is to ask whether a video is AI-generated, that always expects the worst, and that has mostly stopped caring about anything beyond its own small bubble? Would news like that bring anyone together? This is fertile material, but Spielberg and, especially, screenwriter David Koepp fail to explore it in any convincing way. Worse, they never manage to make it dramatically engaging.
Spielberg has never been a director whose draw is his views on the world, but his incomparable storytelling. I never cared as much about what his films were saying as how they made me feel, or how they were made: an elegant transition, an iconic shot, a perfectly constructed set piece. So the shallow handling of the film’s central dilemma, whether this information belongs to the world, reduced mostly to a religious back and forth between Daniel and his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), then resolved in a single phone call, is frustrating but not exactly shocking. What shocks me is how nothing around it works.
Okay, nothing might be an overstatement. It is Spielberg after all, and even at his worst, his films offer redeeming features. Here they come down to three. The first is an impressive action scene involving a car stuck on a train, far better than anything James Mangold managed in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The second, and the most expected, is the strength of his collaborators: Williams provides a subdued but highly effective score, one whose sparse use only makes it more affecting, while Kaminski still lands the occasional shot worth framing. Neither gives us anything new, nothing they have not already given in other Spielberg films, but a five-star dish still tastes extraordinary, even when you have tasted it before.
The third is the director’s handling of his ensemble, and more specifically his work with Emily Blunt. Her performance is technically impressive, meeting the fast-talking, language-changing challenge head on, and it brings real warmth to the film, far more than the script offers her, saddled as she is with one of the most grating partners in recent memory. The rest of the cast also does a lot to elevate thin material, including Josh O’Connor and Colman Domingo, whose presence alone becomes the defining trait of their characters. The only one who struggles is Colin Firth, who gives the script what it asks for while lacking the presence to make his villain menacing.
The unavoidable truth is that all of that is in service of one of the worst scripts in recent memory, and easily the worst of Spielberg’s career. Yes, even Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had a more competent one. It plays like the rotten child of J.J. Abrams and M. Night Shyamalan rather than the work of the master: embarrassing dialogue, a mystery-box structure, and an inflated sense of its own profundity. Important information about the characters arrives at the precise moment the plot needs it, and those characters keep making unbelievably stupid decisions. Do they really need all that trouble to release a video in the age of the Internet?
Spielberg keeps the film moving fast while never gaining momentum, and the rush never lets a single question breathe. Once you stop to think about it, it all falls apart. Why is Margaret awakened at the exact moment she is? Why does what she remembers matter so much? Why are the villains so terrified of disclosure that they never seem to have a plan B? And the less said about the confusing, half-built World War III lurking in the background, the better. The convoluted plotting keeps pulling you away from the one thing that might have saved the film, caring about these people.
After two hours of a frustrating chase thriller that shoots itself in the foot with a laughable opening confrontation, the wonder finally arrives with even less magic than the thriller had thrills. The alien design is as familiar as it could possibly be, while some of the animal CGI looks startlingly unconvincing for a major production. More damaging, the scenes centered on the aliens are strangely devoid of awe. Spielberg seems to understand that no one cares about aliens in 2026, but he never finds a new way to make us care. Even in the movies, we have seen it all, every kind of contact, invasion, and revelation. Showing us another vague extraterrestrial presence is not enough.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Disclosure Day might not be the worst film in Spielberg’s filmography, we have The BFG for that, but for me it might be the most frustrating. Its philosophical conversation starters are as shallow as a puddle, and worse, the film falls apart as both a thriller and a sci-fi mystery. Spielberg once made me fall in love with cinema. Ever since I was four, just hearing the opening notes of Jurassic Park would fill my head with awe. E.T. made me levitate while Indiana Jones made me sweat. Here, the only thing he fills my head with is second-hand embarrassment. I wish I could have felt what those of you who loved it did, but I spent the whole film waiting. Maybe it is time for that Western you keep promising, Steve.