Given Steven Spielberg’s return to the alien genre with Disclosure Day, I can’t help but compare the movie to his other films depicting extraterrestrials, and, generally, it holds up quite well. Much like War of the Worlds, this film is a high-stakes chase, and both are satisfying action rides. While almost no film compares to E.T.’s sense of wonder, some of the scenes with animals in Disclosure Day evoke a similar feeling. The closest comparison, however,is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which highlights some of the strengths of Disclosure Day as well as its one major shortcoming: the ending.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the ending of Disclosure Day.

To be clear, I’m not accusing Spielberg of repeating himself. Disclosure Day is about cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who has stolen evidence proving the existence of aliens on Earth and the conspiracy to withhold that information from the public. Now he’s on the run from those conspirators until he can reveal the evidence to the general public, hence the title. Close Encounters is about utility lineman Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), who sees a UFO while on a job and quickly becomes obsessed with them. His obsession then leads him to seek out the aliens.

Besides the alien connection, those plots don’t have a lot in common, but there’s a similarity in the structure of the films in that both are all about the build-up to the ending, which is promised not only by the story, but by the very titles of the films. Disclosure Day has to end with the disclosure of the alien conspiracy, otherwise you really don’t have a movie. Close Encounters begins with the UFO bypassing Roy and its lights burning his face, which means the ending has to bring........

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