‘Disclosure Day’ review: I wish life were like a Steven Spielberg movie

Steven Spielberg is likely the most iconic American filmmaker living today. He’s gifted audiences with the Indiana Jones movies, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, and Jurassic Park. Now, with Disclosure Day, he may have made his most Spielberg movie yet — yes, even more Spielberg than his thinly veiled autobiography The Fabelmans. 

With Disclosure Day, I experienced the distinctive thrill of watching a master filmmaker do what he does best. The film, which focuses on a band of people’s struggle to release secret information about extraterrestrial contact on Earth, is a dizzying mix of action, humor, adventure, sci-fi, and wonder. Naturally, I laughed, cried, and gasped. But more than that, Disclosure Day made me feel like I better understand the whole of Spielberg’s work, and him as a person. 

What’s Disclosure Day about? 

The answer might sound dry: a power struggle at a military-industrial corporation called Wardex risks exposing the truth about extraterrestrial life to the wide world, which is on the brink of nuclear war (again). However, in the hands of Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Death Becomes Her, Presence) this is not a dry tale of corporate espionage and stiff whistleblowers. For one thing, it begins with us, their audience, getting stomped in the face. 

Disclosure Day unexpectedly opens in the middle of a vicious grudge match between two bulky pro-wrestlers. And the POV-shot that kicks things off is under the foot of one as he trounces on the face of another. From the start, Disclosure Day is about conflict.

However, as the view of this arena pulls back — exiting the thrashed fighter’s perspective — we see our hero in the stands. A meek figure sitting among roaring fans, American mathematician Daniel Kellner (Challengers‘ Josh O’Connor) is silent and stressed. 

Colin Firth is Wardex head Noah Scanlon.
Credit: Niko Tavernise/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Swiftly, Disclosure Day reveals he’s on the run from Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) the head of Wardex, because Daniel’s backpack contains 78 years of documentation of UFO sightings, alien crash landings, and testing on live survivors. He and a small group of defectors led by a dashing Colman Domingo, wish to reveal this news to the world, believing that the truth is our right. But Scanlon and his army of gun-toting minions believe the world can’t handle the truth. 

Into this struggle, others will be pulled in, by fate or chance. Daniel’s Catholic girlfriend Jane (a wide-eyed Eve Hewson) is used as an emotional pawn by Scanlon, forcing the couple to go to unusual lengths to ensure their safety. Meanwhile, far off in Kansas City, Missouri, a weather presenter named Margaret Fairchild (a multi-faceted Emily Blunt) has begun speaking in other languages and psychically understanding those around her, all because a bird flew into her exposed-brick loft apartment. Her musician boyfriend Jackson (Thunderbolts*‘ Wyatt Russell) is understandably perplexed. Especially as she insists — in an urgent whisper — they must evade the men in suits who claim they’re from the FBI. 

In a rollicking road trip full of action set pieces, sci-fi spookiness, and deeply humane bits of comedy, Margaret and Daniel will come together and fight for not just the future of humanity, but also humanity’s understanding of the universe.

Disclosure Day is about the battle between fear and empathy. 

Daniel (Josh O’Connor) and Margaret (Emily Blunt) are on the side of empathy.
Credit: Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Snarling and deeply British, Firth feels almost a vintage villain, dusted off from so many ’80s action movies. Cheers to the actor best-known for romances like Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Love Actually, he’s pretty damn intimidating as a man who has little faith in mankind. In sneering speeches, Scanlon demands that Daniel understand that people are ruled by fear. Secrets are essential to maintaining societal peace. 

Other arguments are offered across Disclosure Day about why humans might not be ready to understand we’re not the center of the universe or even God’s creation. But Koepp’s dialogue — always rooted in a place of earnest understanding — pushes back with compassion. Daniel, Margaret, and their band of rebels believe in empathy over fear. 

And through this lens, every character’s motivations become clear. And frankly, a clear distinction across heroes and villains in Spielberg’s filmography. Villains choose fear; heroes choose empathy. In Disclosure Day, Scanlon fears a world where he cannot be in control, in this case of the secrets of the universe. He argues that others will fear these aliens, who do not look like us or speak our language. But their first message to us? “Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know.” 

Emily Blunt plays weather reporter Margaret Fairchild.
Credit: Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

This becomes the plea of Disclosure Day. Not just as we consider what could (and likely does) exist beyond our planet, but in how we consider each other. Empathy is presented not just as a virtue but also as a crucial tool of evolution. If we can overcome our own fears and dare to empathize with those we don’t see as like us, what might we achieve? 

The final act explores this in a way that bristled with my suspension of disbelief. Bear with me.

Disclosure Day offers out-of-this-world spectacle and one of the most thrilling action sequences of 2026. 

Steven Spielberg embraces action here.
Credit: Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

Disclosure Day functions like a companion piece to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Like Spielberg’s 1977 film, the story of alien life’s existence focuses on how two average white Americans, one male and one female, comprehend it. But more importantly, the production design and creature design of that classic film carry over here, suggesting a narrative continuum without any characters in common. 

What sets Disclosure Day apart is that Spielberg embraces action here. While Daniel and Margaret aren’t soldiers, they face off against plenty. That means car chase scenes, fleeing gunfire, stand-offs over alien tech, and one particular chase scene involving a train. The latter was so tense I held my breath, only letting it out to scream in excitement. 

All of this to say, Spielberg had me deeply hooked. I believed in this world, and in these people. In particular because Disclosure Day — in its runtime of two hours and 25 minutes — remembers to take time to establish its heroes through simple, almost mundane actions. In Jaws, it’s the scene where Chief Brody plays a simple game of mimicry with his young son over the dinner table. We understand him not as some invincible action star, but a dad who has to do something outrageously risky to protect his family and his home. 

Steven Spielberg on the set of “Disclosure Day.”
Credit: Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

In Disclosure Day, this scene is about smashing a cellphone for security. It’s a trope in a bunch of espionage movies, typically executed with a casualness that befits a smooth secret agent. But when Margaret gets a call from a stranger who warns her to destroy her cell, she reacts to it with the expertise of a weather reporter. She tosses her phone out the window and directs her baffled boyfriend (Russell is hilarious in this role) to run it over. He tries and fails, leading to some couples bickering that is relatable, but also brilliantly funny because they are fumbling their escape in this awkwardness! 

Which brings me back to the film’s final act. Like with Jaws, I wanted to be so hooked by Spielberg’s storytelling that I never questioned if a shark even can be blown up that way. But the final act of Disclosure Day isn’t asking me to excuse movie science silliness. It’s asking me to trust that in a time of crisis, humanity will choose empathy over fear. And while I relished watching Margaret and Daniel’s collaboration toward their hard-fought disclosure day, I realized to my own ache that my suspension of disbelief rattled because I don’t trust that things would play out as they did. I wish I did. I wish life were like a Spielberg movie. 

On its surface, Disclosure Day is about aliens. But beneath that, it’s about us — or more specifically, how Spielberg sees humanity itself. And while he has more faith in us than I do, I hope he’s right. 

Disclosure Day opens in theaters June 12.