Quick Synopsis: A former cybersecurity expert and a TV meteorologist uncover a decades-long conspiracy hiding humanity’s contact with extraterrestrials, racing to reveal the truth before powerful forces silence them.

I’m not a huge Spielberg fan. I’m not saying I don’t love some of his work. But no matter how good his films are (and they are, there’s no denying that), I’m not sure any of them would be in my personal top 100. I admire his work more than I like it. The one that I hold the most affection for is probably The BFG. He is very good at what he does: grounded spectacle. Really, the best way to sum them up is that they inspire wonder and awe.

That is what drives Disclosure Day. That, and hope. The emotional anchor is empathy; the idea that humanity’s ability to sympathise with others is one of our greatest strengths, and leads to our growth as a species. In a crapsack world, it’s nice to see something with hope as a central theme. It works, too. The emotional beats hit like a freight train, or a passenger train; I think if I get run over by a train, I’m not going to be that bothered by what type of train it is. Unless it’s a steam train, then I’ll be delighted as it means my obituary can say I was “chuffed to bits”.

Since it is so committed to wonder, there is the risk that it could come off slightly naive. That it would come off TOO hopeful and twee, making it seem almost like a kids’ movie. Thankfully, it contains just enough nightmare fuel to keep you interested. The footage of what humanity does to the aliens is shocking, haunting, and devastatingly accurate. That awfulness helps sell the sincerity, though. To inspire humanity to be at its best, we need to see it at its worst. We need to see it as cruel, selfish, and violent. It’s the old wrestling principle: to have someone the fans truly love, the fans kind of need to hate them first.

Science fiction has spent most of its existence asking what aliens would do to us. Invade, enslave, eat, breed (fingers crossed the last one)? The humans in this film are aware of this, and it’s why they fear the aliens. That cynicism is what stops us advancing. So in a way, it’s not actually about aliens. Disclosure Day is about humanity confronting proof that it is not alone. The question isn’t about whether we survive the encounter, but whether we deserve to.

This all sounds overly sentimental. A film where the real superpower is being nice? That sounds unbearably sweet. Which it is. But I liked it anyway. Whilst it is a bit too “nice”, it’s sincere. Anybody can be cynical; hope is harder. Hope risks looking like an idiot if it doesn’t work out. That’s why a film like this is impossibly brave.

Now it’s time for me to mention its second biggest flaw (I’ll discuss the first one later, and it’s controversial). We are told that the world is on the edge: the doomsday clock is practically midnight, there’s panic on the streets of London, and at the disco. We’re told that. But we never really feel it. We spend so much time with characters who are isolating themselves from the world that we never really get a good look at the world they’re isolating themselves from. That may be because Spielberg is so gifted at creating wonder and beauty that despair and existential dread never quite emerge from the visuals.

Now onto my biggest issue with Disclosure Day: Emily Blunt. She’s usually really good. But for whatever reason, I didn’t buy her performance in this. It felt like the epitome of “dull surprise”. Instead of displaying wonder and awe, it just seems like she’s constantly high. It’s made all the more obvious by how good Josh O’Connor is in comparison.

I don’t think his performance is the best in the film, though. That goes to someone else. I don’t know who Courtney Grace is. At the time of writing, she doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. And I’m certainly not saying she should have been the lead; she’s only in one scene, so it would be a stretch to go from that to anchoring the film. But her performance is spellbinding. Her character doesn’t even receive a name. But her role is important; she’s the news anchor talking about the footage in real time. Having to stay professional whilst obviously hiding her emotions, before ending up emotionally overwhelmed by what she’s seeing. By the time the information is disclosed, pretty much every character is somebody who already had some knowledge of the events, as did the audience. So she’s an in-universe audience surrogate. Yes, we see brief moments of how large groups of people react, but it’s Grace’s performance that lets us truly feel the awe that humanity feels. In a film full of excellent performers, she stood out.

In a way, that encapsulates Disclosure Day. It’s not aliens or magic powers that wow us in the end: it’s a person. Disclosure Day understands that humanity doesn’t experience awe; people do. That moment works because it takes something incomprehensibly large and channels it through an individual.

The thing is, when a film is this sincere, you stop judging it purely on logic. You judge it on whether you believe it. Not whether the politics make sense, not whether every plot point survives scrutiny, but whether the emotional truth lands. For me, it did. Yes, I wish it explored more ideas in depth (it briefly talks about what the existence of aliens means for religion, and aside from one nun being okay with it, it’s not really touched upon). We’re not really given enough time to see the impact the disclosures have.

Maybe that’s the point. We’re not left with certainty that something will happen. We don’t know for sure that humanity can save itself. Instead, we’re left with the hope and belief that it will. Really, there’s a world of possibilities that Disclosure Day opens up, and maybe it’s up to us to keep those worlds open. We have the possibility that, given undeniable proof that we are small, fragile, and not alone, humanity might finally grow up.