Spoilers Ahead ..
This review is going to contain spoilers for the movie Disclosure Day. Read at your own peril.
If there was ever a film you should see with your most intelligent friends, the ones who can debate whether disclosure of alien life would help or hurt the planet, this is the film.
Some of the ads give away a few notable scenes that appear in the movie, and they make Disclosure Day look a little more frightening than it actually is. But those scenes are still effectively used in the film itself. But if you’re going to this movie thinking you’re seeing some sort of a horror you’re not, you’re more seeing a thriller chase movie with deep questions..
Steven Spielberg is back, giving us the famous camera angles, wide shots, close-ups, and dramatic moments he’s known for. Emily Blunt gives the kind of strong performance we’ve come to expect from her. Couple that with the rest of the cast, a strange and somewhat bizarre CGI alien at the end, and we have Disclosure Day.
And it’s arriving at a weird time.
Disclosure seems to be slowly happening in the real world, as UFO files continue to be released by the government. At the same time, people are actively debating whether the whole thing is just a big fake distraction from “the real agenda” .. and you can choose whichever real agenda you think it’s distracting us from.
But in this movie, the world is not distracted by something insignificant. World War III has begun, and the mass media in Disclosure Day is covering it 24/7.
That is, until a rogue group of contracted government workers decides to sneak evidence from the UFO files and reveal it to the entire planet.
The race is on between the good guys and the bad guys.. and you can take your pick as to which is which .. until the climactic ending, when we as a civilization are forced to pause our wars and confront something much deeper and more profound.
The positives here are the acting, the score, the writing, and the film itself.
The negatives could also be the acting, the score, the writing, and the film itself.
This movie is surprisingly divisive. In fact, the audience I saw it with seemed split right down the middle. A few people clapped. Others sighed. It perfectly fits the divided Rotten Tomatoes score currently online. Even the critics seem divided. It’s not getting the roaring praise that other Spielberg films have received, and it’s not dominating the box office the way it probably would have 25 years ago with Spielberg’s name attached.
That alone shows how much things have changed.
Generationally speaking, this year’s horror movies — Obsession and Backrooms — have shown younger directors becoming more popular with younger audiences than Spielberg himself. But the truth is, Disclosure Day is good. Maybe not great, but good. And more than that, it feels significant.
It feels important.
A lot of us conspiracy-minded folks have wondered for a long time whether Steven Spielberg knew something. And if he doesn’t, he’s very good at faking it.
But the movie matters not just because of the acting, the filmmaking, or the spectacle. It matters because of the questions it asks and, more importantly, the questions it refuses to answer.
Disclosure Day may not be Spielberg’s greatest film. But it is one of his most interesting in years. And at this moment in history, that might be enough to spawn an important debate at America’s 250th..
