Movie Review | Disclosure Day

Disclosure Day (Photo – Universal Pictures0

About two-thirds of the way through Disclosure Day, the new film by Steven Spielberg, one character turns to another and says, “What the hell is going on?”

Disclosure Day
Directed by Steven Spielberg – 2026
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

I hear you, buddy.

A throwback to his Close Encounters of the Third Kind days, Disclosure Day (or DD) comes off as a kind of tired tribute band or recycled greatest-hits LP. It’s storytelling in Spielberg’s familiar style, technically efficient, but in service of a tale that loses momentum halfway through, shifting from a world on the apocalyptic brink to something resembling regressive therapy for its star, Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt.

She’s the best thing about the movie, portraying a woman whose mind, figuratively touched by aliens, suddenly gains extraordinary abilities. She can instantly speak Russian and Korean. She talks her way out of a speeding ticket by reading a traffic cop’s thoughts and soothing his domestic anxieties. It’s an empowering transformation for someone stuck in the fluffy weather-girl role at a Kansas City television station, someone who longs to do more meaningful work, something closer to Jane Fonda’s role in The China Syndrome. Margaret is both overwhelmed by and ecstatic about her new powers, and Blunt skillfully captures the exhilaration of someone completely “in the flow.”

I knew where the movie was going; I just didn’t understand how it was getting there. I knew that Margaret was helping Dr. Donald Kellner, who, like her, has been granted extraordinary abilities by an alien intelligence. I knew that Kellner had stolen top-secret files from the Wardex Corporation, files he believes must be made public through “full disclosure all at once.” I knew that Wardex was headed by Noah Scanlon, played by Colin Firth, a sort of Professor X figure who, with the aid of a mouthguard, wires, and a screen, can penetrate minds. Yet there was an off-putting fussiness to Firth’s performance that kept me from fully buying into the role.

What I didn’t understand, as Margaret Fairchild and Donald Kellner (played by Josh O’Connor) spent much of the film running from Firth’s minions and their phalanx of black Dodge minivans, was why the movie became so bogged down in Margaret’s backstory, or how the revelation of the secret files was supposed to prevent the warring nations from tipping into all-out conflict.

DD has a distinctly nostalgic feel. At times, there’s something almost valedictory about it. I’ve already mentioned Close Encounters, and another shot appears lifted directly from Duel, Spielberg’s first feature film, released in 1971. His previous movie, The Fabelmans, was an explicit portrait of the artist as a young man, and while Disclosure Day is not autobiographical in content, it often feels like a return to Close Encounters and even earlier influences.

Certain scenes go so far as to adopt a Disneyfied quality, as though Spielberg were revisiting his childhood inspirations by retelling Bambi through the doe eyes of friendly aliens who have shapeshifted into foxes, birds, deer, and other woodland creatures. I found some of this touchy-feely material so silly, especially when contrasted with the film’s earlier pulse-pounding excitement, that I giggled unintentionally.

The movie has a formulaic feel, and if it weren’t for the aforementioned Emily Blunt, it might verge on becoming a pastiche of Spielberg’s earlier work, which, in some respects, it may be anyway. Unlike last week’s Backrooms, which carried the shock of the new, Disclosure Day ultimately discloses only that its director has done better before.

> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, Regal Paseo, Regency Academy Cinemas, Regal Edwards Alhambra Renaissance, AMC Atlantic Times Square 14, AMC Santa Anita 16, Regal UA La Canada, and Laemmle Glendale.