Reviewed: Steven Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day’

Disclosure Day provides this — and, happily, something more. To be sure, the movie comes loaded with obligatory sentiment about the inexhaustible goodness of aliens, which Spielberg, his terrifying 2005 version of War of the Worlds notwithstanding, takes as an article of faith. The aliens are so kindly that they first approach humans by appearing in the guise of friendly forest creatures, such as deer or foxes — creatures, incidentally, that are not always so friendly in real life but are unambiguously so here. We never get to know a specific alien in this film the way we became best buds with E.T., but taken as a species, there can be no doubt that, to quote the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still, they come in peace.

Yet if Disclosure Day were simply a restatement of Spielberg’s fervent hopes for human-alien contact, it would be nothing more than a reminder of his old movies — a welcome reminder, in light of The Post and such, but alarmingly close to pastiche. After all, there are only so many angles from which to film a UFO, or, as the kids say nowadays, a UAP. Happily, Spielberg has something stranger — and scarier — in mind.

As scripted by David Koepp from a story by Spielberg, Disclosure Day presents nothing less than a deep state committed, by any means necessary, to the permanent concealment of evidence of alien contact. This task has fallen to a vastly powerful, apparently unregulated government-adjacent group known as Wardex. Social media feeds are scrutinized in banks of monitors for any sign that the secret knowledge has spilled out, while Edward Snowden-like leakers — notably, our hero Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) — are subject to threats, intimidation, and worse. The movie even cooks up a juicy villain at the center of the operation, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), whose clipped, British-accented English and well-groomed beard conceal the maniacal degrees to which he will go to keep E.T.’s cousins hidden from view. 

There follows a hectic but involving variation on the “paranoid conspiracy” movies popular during Spielberg’s heyday (but never made by Spielberg himself), including The Conversation (1974) and Three Days of the Condor (1975).

Daniel, a rogue government worker who believes his civic duty compels disclosure, is contrasted with Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a perky, upwardly mobile local TV meteorologist in Kansas City, Missouri, whose unaccountable fluency in Russian, newfound habit of vocalizing using clucking sounds, and intermittent capacity for mind-reading are clues that aliens might have once paid her a visit. (Pleasingly, Spielberg again locates all-American innocence in Missouri, the state to which Kate Capshaw’s Willie Scott wished to return after having been put through the mill in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)

Over the course of the film, Daniel and Margaret, separately or as a duo, must dodge Wardex’s efforts to silence or sideline them. Margaret busts out of a hospital populated with suspicious government types, while Daniel seeks refuge with his loving, greatly tolerant girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), in abandoned, off-the-grid structures. Once Daniel and Margaret have met up, they catapult themselves aboard a train while evading bullets.

We are treated to some first-class set pieces, including one straight out of Hitchcock. Using mind-control gear evidently purloined from crashed UFOs, Noah remotely enters the consciousness of Jane, a former Catholic postulant who, when not under the influence of nefarious actors, gamely tries to incorporate alien civilizations into her theology. (Spielberg remains respectful of traditional religious belief to the extent that a nun is among the movie’s most likable characters.) Yet Noah, in this dazzlingly suspenseful scene, transmits to Jane the desire to kill Daniel — to do Wardex’s dirty work, in other words. Agonizingly, we watch as Jane lies in wait for Daniel to return — the tip of a kitchen knife poking from her sleeve. (Spoiler alert: she snaps out of this lethal trance.) Later, Daniel, Margaret, and a cadre of whistleblowers marshal alien tech to turn invisible while warding off Wardex officials, who, comically, find themselves running into unseen objects and obstacles like Keystone Cops.

REVIEW: WHY DO WE FEEL BECKONED BY BACKROOMS?

Thanks to such stellar set pieces, Disclosure Day is seldom less than gripping. As Margaret, Blunt is especially good — just off-kilter enough in her daily life for her good-natured, guitar-strumming boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) to think that her obvious signs of prior alien contact might mean she’s just having a bad day. Inevitably, Daniel and Margaret combine forces so they can make the disclosure promised in the title: Daniel, with his abundance of flash drives; and Margaret, with her access to a local TV station — which, in the film’s universe, is apparently a sufficient platform from which to reach the whole world.

Does this movie change the course of Spielberg’s career as it enters its last act? Not quite. But, as we approach what is likely to be a punishingly bland summer movie season, the director is to be credited for fashioning a first-rate entertainment from what could have been a retread.

Peter Tonguette is the Life & Arts editor of the Washington Examiner magazine.