Steven Spielberg’s latest foray into the world of aliens fails its objective, with Disclosure Day outdated in its ideas and missing a sense of wonder.
Much like anything to do with UFOs/UAPs these days, Disclosure Day promises spectacle and revelation yet instead is an underwhelming dud. Something of a spiritual companion to the 1977 sci-fi spectacular Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this fifth UFO-centric film directed by Steven Spielberg takes its focus away from the skies and upon a group of humans unaware of their part in a grand plan to reveal to the world “we are not alone”. The result is a sci-fi version of a faith-based film; a UFO drama made for the initiated but leaving the unconverted restless and uninspired.
Disclosure Day begins with cybersecurity specialist Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) on the run from a secret government agency led by Noah Scanlan (Colin Firth) after he steals a piece of alien technology and files detailing direct contact with extraterrestrials dating back to the Roswell incident of 1947. Elsewhere, television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) discovers long-dormant psychic abilities that draw her to Daniel and his mission to disclose the existence of alien-life to the world through the help of disclosure advocate Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo.)
During this time where UFO/UAP discussion has become mainstream fodder, Disclosure Day brings nothing of interest to a subject that has lost its sense of awe a dozen UFO documentaries ago. One would think that Spielberg would be the one to bring wonder and excitement to the UFO movie, yet the E.T. filmmaker along with screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park) instead opt to make an introspective alien drama, a style of filmmaking that is hardly a strength of Spielberg’s and has already been done to near perfection in the Denis Villeneauve directed Arrival.
Not to say that Disclosure Day is a boring movie. Emily Blunt delivers quite a captivating performance that has heart and sweet-natured sass, and Spielberg delivers a few entertaining chase sequences to add some excitement to the perpetual proceedings.
Throughout the two-hour and 25-minute Disclosure Day, though, is an absence of wonderment and intrigue that the combination of the films’ varied elements should have conjured and are instead replaced with material that is too stuck in its feelings rather than inspiring any sense of them, save for frustration.
