WARNING: Many, many Disclosure Day spoilers below. Do not read on unless you want this deeply silly film spoiled.
I went to a screening of Steven Spielberg’s new alien blockbuster Disclosure Day last Wednesday – and I’m still mad.
Yes, like many, I was slightly suckered by Spielberg himself intimating in Disclosure Day’s final trailer that he was ready to share his own knowledge of alien encounters with the world, suggesting the fictional film would contain some sort of real-life insight about extraterrestrial life (ok, nice work, Disclosure Day marketing team. Ya got me. I want my $20 back).
But that dupe aside, the two-and-a-half hour film is riddled with so many plot holes, inconsistencies and straight-up stupid moments, I need to rant about the ones that have been driving me most mad, particularly as the film sits with a bewilderingly high critic’s score of 74 on review aggregate site Metacritic.
The film opened atop the global box office this weekend, raking in more than $130 million in cinemas around the world. If you haven’t seen it yet, consider this your warning.
There are very few aliens in this alien movie – but a lot of car chases
For much of the film we’re following Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity expert turned whistleblower who is carrying video evidence of alien life on earth in his backpack – and is on the run from the shadowy figures at his company, Wardex, who want to stop him from making it public.
Over and over, Kellner evades these men in black in chase sequences that seem to defy the laws of space and time: In one unintentionally hilarious scene, he sneaks up behind about 50 of them and manages to steal one of their cars. They’re all there to find One Daniel Kellner, but approaching them while crouched behind a sparse fence, he’s apparently entirely invisible.
Later on in this chase sequence, Kellner and his girlfriend are being followed in hot pursuit when their car comes to cliff edge. Despite their pursuers being mere seconds behind them, they have time to exit their car, grab their stuff, put a rock on the accelerator to make the car drive over the cliff, and hide behind a nearby boulder.
And that’s how they get away: The pair hide behind a rock then simply … walk off as these elite security experts look for them mere metres away, scratching their heads.
Later, the same team swarm a motel the couple are hiding in. Well, I say swarm, but they don’t bother to secure the back of the motel before bursting through the front door, meaning Daniel can smuggle Jane out a window, where she briefly hides behind a tree before simply … walking off again.
Seriously, shadowy elite security figures, it feels like your hearts aren’t in this chase.
Most of the action in the film centres around a magical alien vape
The backstory to this hand-held, cylindrical piece of alien tech is never actually explained, but it’s used by the film’s human characters to get them out of all sorts of sticky situations and further the plot. Grasping the alien Wii-remote in one’s hand, humans can variously:
-Teleport to a place of their choosing,
-Inhabit someone else’s body,
-Morph into the bad guys’ dead relatives, leaving them so emotionally overcome that you are able to easily escape,
-Make you, everyone and everything around you invisible, so you can all easily escape from the bad guys in one big invisi-posse,
-Instantly repair TV station equipment after the bad guys bomb it to stop you from broadcasting proof of alien life.
Colman Domingo, set designer?
Domingo is a key figure in the film, playing another of the Wardex defectors, Hugo Wakefield. But he spends much of Disclosure Day on the phone to Kellner, merely coaxing him in his death-defying mission across the country.
Hugo would love to help in person, you see, but he’s busy as a … Broadway set dresser? Every time we see him, he’s helping build an increasingly elaborate set.
Near the film’s climax, the purpose is revealed: Wakefield and his team have been busy recreating TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild’s entire childhood home circa 1996, down to the tiniest details, to help Margaret (Emily Blunt, the best thing about this film) remember what exactly happened when she was abducted by aliens as a child.
So many questions. Who told the whistleblowers that embarking on their own very special episode of The Block was the only way they could jog Margaret’s memory? How did they have access to her 1996-era home, to even know what it should look like, down to every minute detail? And where did they even get this stuff – have they been trawling eBay for weeks to buy retro Beanie Babies and Spice Girls posters?
It’s 2026, but we MUSTN’T put this stuff on the internet
After Kellner steals this stash of video evidence so he can make it public, you’d think the most obvious course of action would be to get it all online as soon as possible. But no: for reasons unclear, Kellner is instructed NOT to upload any of this content onto the internet. Instead he must carry it with him cross-country – nearly losing it all on several occasions, so that it can have its grand reveal: On a local news station, where Margaret can give it a proper newsreader intro. Did the whistleblowers have a secret second motive here: Share proof of alien life, and give local newsreader Margaret a star-making exclusive?
Screenwriter David Koepp penned the film based on an original idea by Spielberg. This is one of those details that makes you wonder if it’s an idea that was kicking around for decades, but never got a much-needed update for the reality of today’s online world.
Character motivations change on a dime
We can thank that magical space kazoo for this one, but still, it makes for a damp squib of an ending: The bad guys close in on the TV station, bombing all their tech and pulling the broadcast just as Margaret is about to go on air. They burst in, and then simply … change their minds.
Scary Wardex head Noah (Colin Firth) appears ready to order them all killed, when Margaret does her previous “let me morph into your dead relative” trick and Noah, so moved at the sight of his late wife, pulls up a chair and lets the broadcast proceed. Perhaps he’s a conduit for the viewer at this point: Look, I’m tired. Let’s just get this over with so we can all go home.
Noah’s murderous head honcho – a man so committed to keeping the company’s secrets that he’s been shooting (and missing) at Margaret and Daniel for most of the film – simply storms out in a huff when he realises his boss is letting it all go to air. Hired goon workplace drama!
The film ends just as it starts to get good
After airing the video evidence of aliens – which, implausibly, is almost immediately picked up and aired live by every major news outlet around the world, and recieved with a universal hushed awe – the Wardex whistleblowers wheel out their piece de resistance. It’s a real-life alien (ABOUT BLOODY TIME), whose speech Margaret, who has been gifted with superhuman language skills by the aliens, will now translate for the viewers at home.
Ready to begin this alien transmission to earth, Margaret turns to the camera.
“Listen,” she begins – and then the credits roll (which elicited an audible audience groan in my screening).
And there you have it. A film that’s spent two-and-a-half hours hand-wringing about the impacts of disclosing alien life to the public – will we believe it? Can we handle it? Will it bring about world peace, or tear us further apart? – ends before any of those questions are answered.
Unless? Oh dear god. Please don’t let there be a sequel.