Disclosure Day (2026) starts, intentionally, with the audience in the dark. It’s a befuddling start, because for anyone who’s seen the trailer, you already know it’s about aliens. We’re slowly introduced to the characters and the unfolding narrative of alien existence on Earth through the eyes of a whistleblower, played by Josh O’Connor, who has stolen information about alien existence from a private company. He’s intent on this information reaching the wider public, coupled with Emily Blunt, a weatherwoman who is undergoing a strange change.
There’s a big, bad corporation, led by Colin Firth, hell-bent on trying to stop them, so they can keep their proprietary information. Firth’s performance is convincingly villainous, but, as you’ll see, he fails to quite stick the evildoer landing. There is, in a typical Spielberg style, a mixture of folklore and sci-fi that keeps the plot mildly eerie without veering into outright scary.
“Disclosure Day” came out at the perfect time, just as the heat is hitting and before majorly anticipated summer releases. It epitomizes a summer popcorn movie. In fact, the popcorn and about three hours spent in the cool indoors are a huge draw themselves. The film is enjoyable, but not striking in its storytelling or visuals, with the aliens being stereotypical, Spielbergian ones.
It’s not a humorous film; “Disclosure Day” relies mostly on suspense, action, and the grounded performances of O’Connor and Blunt. It has too many action beats for my taste. I did comment to my movie-going companion that maybe Spielberg would benefit from a different story editor. But for a summer action film, especially if you’re already a fan of Spielberg, it hits the spot.
This is Spielberg’s sixth or seventh movie that focuses on aliens and extraterrestrial life, and he’s produced countless more. It’s not as family-friendly as “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982), it doesn’t ask as many questions about the post-human as “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” (2001), but “Disclosure Day” is certainly a film for these times.
As usual, Spielberg uses aliens to interrogate humanity. This time, his questions aren’t really about whether humans can handle alien existence (see an oddly-placed, religious side plot of the movie with O’Connor’s on-screen girlfriend, Eve Hewson), but about the right to information itself. In the age of the Epstein files, Spielberg makes the case for truth, the full truth. Whether or not we can handle it, he’s maybe left for his eighth alien film.
You can catch “Disclosure Day” at the Peterborough Community Theatre, playing now through Thursday, July 2. Don’t skimp on the popcorn.