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Steven Spielberg’s Aliens

Disclosure Day has plenty of UFOs and extraterrestrial species but very little of the human insights found in the filmmaker’s past work.

Eyes deceive in Steven Spielberg’s latest blockbuster. Disclosure Day, the storied director’s fifth film in which humans encounter aliens, hinges on characters adjusting their literal and metaphysical views as they experience the unknown. The truth is out there, and if the heroes can outrun a shadowy corporation, traumatic pasts, and mysterious phenomena, they can catch up to it. In this way, the film is classic Spielberg: a widescreen spectacle grounded in both the wondrous sensation of feeling one’s world expand and the challenge of acting on that epiphany.

Less rewarding this time around, however, is the journey to that big discovery and the larger ideas behind what is revealed. Although it kind of works as a smooth-brained blockbuster, Disclosure Day too often feels familiar, echoing Spielberg’s past work while nostalgically clinging to 20th-century imagery and ideals. Despite being based on an original story conceived by Spielberg and fleshed out by his long-time collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds), the film is frustratingly backward-looking. We’ve seen this UFO story before—in Spielberg’s oeuvre, in shows like The X-Files, and in so many other places.

The disclosure at the center of the film is set in motion by Daniel Kellner (played by Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity whistleblower who steals a trove of data from his employer, a mysterious company called Wardex, and races to deliver it to the public. The data proves the existence of aliens and the US defense industry’s decades-long cover-up of the info, and Daniel, a loner with hangdog eyes, is wracked with guilt as he shepherds it along. He knows he can divulge this grand secret only because he used to protect it.

As Wardex sends its armed goons after Daniel and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson), a television meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) also experiences a radical........

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