The summer movie season has suffered a gut punch with Disclosure Day, one of the dopiest, messiest movies that Steven Spielberg has ever made.
He made my all-time-favorite movie, Jaws. But he’s now directed 37 movies (yes, I’m counting his lame kick-the-can segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie), so of course he’s made some clunkers along the way, like Hook, The Terminal, The BFG and a couple of others.
Disclosure Day is now the worst movie he’s ever made.
The film posits itself as a return to the “aliens are among us” heyday of Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Aliens were also part of his excellent adaptation of War of the Worlds and the rather unpopular Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which I kind of liked despite the silly alien stuff). The problem here is that Disclosure Day is 95% a lame chase movie that hardly has anything to do with aliens.
A woefully miscast Josh O’Connor plays Daniel, a former employee of a nefarious agency that has been protecting secrets about Earth’s possible interactions with aliens, including Roswell, for 80 years. He’s stolen some important materials, and now he’s running away.
Colin Firth is his former boss, and he’s pissed. Employees aren’t supposed to steal the secrets of Roswell, so he’s determined to get them back. He’s so determined that he psychically enters the brain of Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), to coax locations out of her. He even tries to manipulate her arms in an attempt to stab and kill Daniel. This is one super-pissed-off former employer.
This psychic/supernatural element is entirely unwelcome. Those of you eager to see Spielberg and screenplay writer David Koepp tackling the world’s handling of UFO secrets are probably looking for some speculation regarding what could be in those files. Instead, you get a dopey movie where a guy is messing with people’s heads from afar.
When a TV meteorologist named Margaret (Emily Blunt) starts speaking in really irritating, presumably alien tongues during a local broadcast, she becomes involved in the chase to reveal the covered-up secrets, or something like that. Apparently, she’s been “activated,” whatever the hell that means. Besides alien tongues, she can speak other languages like Russian—and she can read your mind! Again, this veers into the supernatural, which destroys the intrigue of trying to reveal a supposed conspiracy about UFOs.
All of the psychic stuff feels like it should be in another movie. Yes, Close Encounters and E.T. each had a psychic element (Roy’s visions of Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters; Elliott’s mind/heart connection to E.T.), but those approaches blended well into the films. In Disclosure Day, the psychic element feels forced, as if Koepp was backed into a corner on how to push the plot forward. (If you are keeping score, Koepp was also the writer responsible for that much-maligned alien content in Crystal Skull.)
It all builds up to a final five minutes or so where you can see how most of the film’s semi-meager (by today’s blockbuster standards) budget of $115 million was spent. I won’t give anything away, but there are basically two payoffs. One of them is semi-interesting but rushed; the second is absolutely preposterous.
I wish this was a spoiler review, because I really want to go off on how the last note of this movie is so incredibly stupid. Because of the Code of the Movie Critic, I will keep my mouth shut, but holy shit, is it ridiculous.
Because most of the money went into the final few minutes, the CGI effects of animals are abysmal. They look like cartoon characters rather than real beings—and this is in a movie by a guy who made CGI dinosaurs look realistic more than 30 years ago. A racoon in this movie looks like it was lifted from a kindergartener’s coloring book.
I don’t consider the following gripes to be spoilers because they are in the trailers or commercials for the film. As mentioned, most of the movie deals with typical chase-scene tropes, including this highly implausible sequence: Daniel and Margaret are trying to get on a train from their car, which just got hit and is being dragged by said train. Does the conductor notice that he has hit a car and is dragging it along? Nope … the lengthy scene is allowed to play out while the world’s very worst train conductor is oblivious.
Then there is a sequence in which a crop circle magically forms around Daniel. Why does this happen? Absolutely no reason is given. He is on his phone; tensions are heightening; the crop circle forms. No great theory about the origins of crop circles is offered … it just happens.
If you are eying this movie because you dig UFO conspiracy theories and old-school Spielberg alien-movie vibes, you will be severely let down. This movie shouldn’t be called Disclosure Day. It should be called Oh Shit, Colin Firth Is Coming to Get Me!
I’m going to let Elliott looking into the sky and crying, as E.T. leaves him to return home, be the final, defining moment of Spielberg’s alien films. As for Disclosure Day, I’m going to purge this whole misguided mess from my brain.
Pretty spot on. I saw this film yesterday and was left completely underwhelmed. The CGI was abysmal, the plot was just stupid, and the whole thing felt like it could’ve been done in a 20 minute video short.
I’m sorry you didn’t get it. Someday.
Right. They didn’t get it. And the crop circle scene is self explanatory if you just pay attention.
Didn’t get what exactly? That this was more of a cheesy sci-fi influenced version of the fast and furious franchise or Steven’s worst film made to date, because that’s exactly what it is unfortunately. Absolute waste of time. After an hour and forty five minutes of an endless and exaggerated chase we get 5 seconds of a poor quality cgi alien sitting in a wheelchair. BOMB
Finally found a reviewer that saw the same movie I did. Easily worst Spielberg film ever. Cheesy and derivative, like some cheap tv series. All so-called emotional beats were trite and unearned. And had absolutely nothing to say about the subject it was supposedly interrogating. Absolutely baffling why this was ever made. And the climax takes place in a broadcast control room for pete’s sake! No sense of wonder. No sense of the cinematic. Imaginatively bankrupt. And this is the same guy who made Close Encounters? Remember how sad it was when Ali kept fighting past retirement. Just stop, Spielberg. Please stop.
From start to finish, a huge disappointment. What happened to Spielberg? This is easily his worst film to date.
Agree, people want to like this people pretend to like this, but if you’re honest with yourself, this movie was got awful and I’m one of the biggest Spielberg fans ever and I couldn’t wait for this movie. I was so excited. But let’s be honest Ask people to challenge these parts and they won’t be able To say this was compelling or necessary or even Spielberg level.
Zero character development. Who had passion for the main actor? Other than his quick statement that he was in jail with no depth, no detail no connection no nothing, did he do any character development for this character at all? Or for Colin Firth where did he work at this fictitious Defense contractor. One of the biggest questions in the world is is the CIA covering this up, but no mention no mention of any connection with the CIA, no intelligence in that part of the script whatsoever. Other than Emily Blunts terrific acting in some segments, No one cared about her. There was no character development there either. She was just a Weather girl lol, And her husband had a cute part, but he was just some redneck mismatch husband that had zero background so he he’s just more needless filling. The Chase scenes were ridiculous, these Black car, black outfit, villains are supposed to be the most advanced group of protectors of the darkest secrets in human history Yet you know nothing about them, The main moronic character that was so miscast because nobody cared about him or anything he was doing, even though he was gonna be releasing the secrets no one even cared, who he was. No one was on his side, and when he’s hiding behind a wooden fence from the best secret keepers and assassins in the world is hiding behind a fence with no cover you could see him from a mile away yet none of these people see him. It was the most ridiculous scene I’ve ever seen in the last 100 years of movie making. The train scene the car headset immediately goes to the head of the train as a disruption the train stops automatically, not on this movie. In this movie, you have two morons jumping to it supposed ladder so far away nobody would make it while the car is bouncing around while the train is going 70 miles an hour and while they’re being shot at with a 44 magnum, and somehow they magically make it up the ladder they don’t even show you and they jumped down into a car. I was waiting for lions or alligators because the scene was so stupid. And enough of the Reddy player, one grabbing a device sitting in a chair getting inside other people’s minds, it didn’t work and Reddy player one nobody watched the movie. It was a terrible movie and you brought the same element back here? Nobody cared. It was stupid. The dumbest part I’ve ever seen in any movie was there the end which I wish was the end, Colin Firth decides to give up and just sits in a chair while they go into full disclosure in front of the whole planet on some fictitious TV station, And when the head of the villains that worked for Colin screamed, “aren’t we gonna stop them?” – Colin just sat down in the chair and gave up, and 20 villains who were human beings and curious like all of us, decide to exit the building and just go back to their cars and go home when the most monumental event is about to happen in human history right in front of them 5 feet from where they’re standing and they just go home maybe to make a hotdog and watch the ball game. I couldn’t believe I was watching this, is Spielberg senile. This movie wasn’t even good enough to be a rough draft for any of his movies. And the CGI seriously did Hannah Barbara do it? It was like Fred Flintstone. It was the most unrealistic CGI in the history of CGI I’m still in total shock that this movie was ever released.
Lastly, and most importantly, we’ve been hyped for this movie you’re gonna walk out with your mouth open oh my God aliens are real. The whole world is gonna change. This is to grooming us for what’s about to happen. Not one person walked out, saying oh my God he converted me I now believe in aliens. All that happened is everybody walked out and said oh my God that was the worst Spielberg movie I’ve seen in decades. Two stars and that’s being really kind. My friend, I’ve watched the movie with told me if they have a geriatric alien that they bring out at the end which they did, the good people that were trying to expose this, why would they not just bring that creature out years ago and just to make disclosure that way. That’s all you need to do. You don’t need these tapes and recordings if people saw that alien they would believe. The movie was just absolutely an uneven mess and Spielberg probably destroyed much of his legacy unfortunately, in the process.
When this movie was over, I turned on signal one on my movie box at home, it’s a new 2026 movie with a very Botox but still effective Dennis Quaid. Very low budget sci-fi brand new movie yet 10 times more interesting and more believable than Spielberg’s flop. At least I had a popcorn movie that made me think, afterwards.
I yelled boo at the end credits. No regrets.