When “Disclosure Day” starts, you’re immediately thrown into the water with no life jacket. It takes a second to get your bearings, but you never quite do. Steven Spielberg’s latest project is almost unrelenting in action and overly stuffed with a lot of good ideas that didn’t feel fully explored.
Some Strong and Not-So-Strong Character Work
There’s something so interesting about examining the relationship between religion, faith, aliens, and what that means for our existence and place in the universe. “Disclosure Day” (story by Spielberg, screenplay by David Koepp) introduces this idea via former nun Jane (Eve Hewson), Daniel Kellner’s (Josh O’Connor) girlfriend, but it goes pretty much nowhere after her conversation with Sister Maura (Elizabeth Marvel). It’s one of the most intriguing parts of the entire film, but Spielberg seemed more concerned about car chases and body snatching. No shade to the body snatching but it lasted an uncomfortably long time.
Daniel is one of the main drivers of the story and also one of the least interesting characters. Most of the time, things are just happening to him; he gets thrown from place to place, driven by other people’s motives. Whether it’s Jane getting mind-controlled by the main villain, Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), to kill him or being ominously directed by Hugo Wakefield (played by a wildly underused Colman Domingo), Daniel didn’t have much agency in his own story. And once he links up with our other main character, he almost becomes irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the highlight of the film, Emily Blunt’s Margaret Fairchild has some of the best moments, funniest one-liners, and engaging scenes as she gets a hang of her powers. Which, she does. Very, very quickly. They used warp speed on this woman’s storyline. One second she’s making toast she won’t eat and the next she’s reading a cop’s soul after a strange meeting with a cardinal. It was all so much, so quickly and it was a fascinating watch. I just wish the film let this part of the story breathe for a bit. In fact, the movie, from the start, felt like it began in the middle and if we had started with Margaret, rather than Daniel, I think the pacing would’ve worked better.
But Margaret’s powers? Cool as fuck, I have to admit. The moment where she holds one of the three alien crystal thingies and hides every person in the warehouse as the villains enter was tense, terrifying, kind of hilarious, and a great way to show how powerful she’d gotten. However, this was also one of those scenes where I started getting confused as to what kind of movie we were watching? Is this a comedy, a sci-fi thriller, a magic show? It’s all three, apparently! Blunt’s scared confusion mixed with growing wonder was beautifully acted and when the plot moved with her, you couldn’t look away; you just wanted to see what she could do next.
Hidden Meaning in the Extraterrestrial
The alien pieces of the story helped imbue the entire plot with a sense of wonderment and urgency. While I wasn’t a big fan of the aliens’ design (large heads and bulging eyes have been done to death), I appreciated how they were incorporated into the plot. It became clear by the end that the aliens themselves weren’t the lesson, it was humanity’s disintegrating community and togetherness that truly threatened us. The aliens were a red herring to deliver that reading.
Emotionally, the third act of the film takes it. Once the team gets to the news station so Margaret could tell the world what the hell is happening, it becomes a more solidified story. There was a nonsensical moment when the villains, who were relentless the entire movie, just…give up at the end. Seriously, Scanlon just sits down in a chair with a “que sera, que sera” attitude. This is the same dude that bodysnatched a former nun! This moment got a laugh out of the theater I was in, but I’m not entirely certain this was supposed to be played for laughs.
Regardless of that silliness, the moment the extraterrestrial news hit other stations, that’s when the film finally achieved something poignant. Courtney Grace’s performance as the NBC anchor delivering the bulk of the news actually moved me to tears. She was incredibly believable as a devastated yet fascinated human being who also had to remain professional and as impartial as she could in the face of bombshell news. The entire sequence was masterfully done; showing people from all over the world frozen and glued to whatever screen they had available. The first two acts’ unevenness could almost be brushed under a rug for how sublime the global reveal was.
Final Thoughts
I sort of liked “Disclosure Day,” but I really wanted to love it. It had all the elements of another Spielberg banger, but there was way too much going on. The great moments either went by too quickly, were overshadowed by nonsense, or were stuffed into the end of the movie. Blunt’s performance was a high point and really sold her part in the film. Domingo did fantastic with what little the story gave him, while Hewson and Grace were the breakout stars bringing emotional weight and depth to the proceedings.
“Disclosure Day” has a lesson at its core, that humans can re-connect through discovery, exploration, and trust; trust being the key word. Or at least, I think it was. Like I said, the movie had so much going on.
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I am a published writer, full-time editor, an events and entertainment reporter and mother of one. Comic books, drag queens, women’s basketball, queer films and TV shows are my bread and butter.
