By Chris Sawin
| Published
Aliens have existed for a very long time in Disclosure Day, and there’s proof of that. On the one hand, the Wardex Corporation, part of the U.S. Government and secretly assigned to extraterrestrial investigations, wants to keep that evidence from reaching the public. On the other hand, a former Wardex employee named Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) leads a revolution to release that information to the masses worldwide. People have a right to know, regardless of how it affects them, once they do.
Caught in the middle of Wardex and Hugo’s obsession with revealing the truth is Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity expert running around with what is seemingly all of the government’s extraterrestrial evidence in his backpack. Daniel rescues his girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson) at the beginning of the film, and she tags along or shows up whenever it’s convenient to the storyline. Jane is a former nun solely so Disclosure Day can make comparisons to religion and whether aliens existing and being revealed to the public is blasphemous or not.
Leading Wardex is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), a man who insists on using alien technology to catch up to Daniel, even though it is clearly killing him. The film introduces a gray crystal the size of a travel toothbrush holder that allows the user to telepathically control and communicate with others.
As Daniel contemplates just dumping everything he has online as he flees, a Kansas City TV meteorologist named Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) speaks alien dialect on the air and gains the ability to know everything about someone just by looking into their eyes. Margaret and Daniel are connected in a way that will be key in the mission to reveal aliens to the world.
No Surface Is That Reflective
There are a few things Disclosure Day does right. It isn’t fair to say that Steven Spielberg is a hack or has lost just about everything that made much of his previous work enjoyable, because certain elements still suggest otherwise. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski returns to work with Spielberg for the 19th time, and it shows as the film looks incredible.
The car chase sequence where Wardex finds Daniel and Jane at the farmhouse is a highlight of the film. As Daniel sneaks around the field, the camera impressively waltzes through and around a fence. The sequence is stitched together as a one-take, and it makes you wonder if there are any hidden cuts because it’s executed so well.
The film has an obsession with lens flares and brightly lit background windows, though. Like, if J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg got into a lens-flare-off, it would be like staring at the sun until our eyes exploded. It’s every major sequence for the first half of Disclosure Day, though. It’s an odd choice since the film is like 93% dialogue, and everything around them can’t be that reflective or take place during that time of day.
As a science fiction film, though, Disclosure Day is a chore to sit through. Clocking in at just under two and a half hours, the film is congested with dialogue. You expect a certain amount of exposition in a film to set the story or eventually lead to something worthwhile. Disclosure Day is all exposition and no payoff. The way the film concludes is so melodramatic and unsatisfying. It feels like Steven Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp were going for how we, as a species, would react if certifiable extraterrestrial proof were unveiled like this.
But all Disclosure Day does is remind you of how stupid the human race actually is. The final moment before the film cuts to black is infuriating, as well. You’ve waited two and a half hours for this moment, and it’s cut short for either obnoxious ambiguity or a potential unwanted sequel. It’s wild that David Koepp wrote 42 drafts of the screenplay, and this is what he landed on.
Awkwardness Abounds
There’s an awkwardness to Steven Spielberg films in the way they’re written that I can’t tell is universally accepted by those who adore his work or goes unnoticed with his status as a well-known director. The attempts at humor are often lame, while the character interactions are overwhelmingly corny. Disclosure Day is no different, and it’s even more irksome because the film feels so long.
Here’s this long-winded and torturous stretch of dialogue with the only reward being a smart ass glance from across the room, a bad attempt at a joke that is total cringe, or body language that is offensively embarrassing for everyone involved. It feels like an intentional dick move you can’t escape from. Disclosure Day is like being trapped in the spiked room in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom while somebody dry humps one of the spikes as a spike pierces your brain and says something like, “At least I’ll have more leg room on airplanes,” right before you’re crushed to death. It’s trash.
It doesn’t help that the people we’re forced to tag along with for most of the film are selfish, annoying pricks. Margaret has a boyfriend named Jackson (Wyatt Russell) who is such a gigantic POS. Margaret dreams of being a serious news anchor, but is currently stuck dancing and acting a fool while showcasing the weather. She wants to move even though they just got settled in Kansas City, and Jackson doesn’t want to because he has his music and he just scored performances two days a week locally.
To make matters worse, he doesn’t want Margaret to succeed or move on because he likes seeing her dance on television. Screw aliens and career advancement since Margaret gives Jackson boners now. After Margaret learns things she shouldn’t, Jackson worries about the dumbest things that don’t matter while something that affects the entire world is going on. She starts talking about Daniel, and he thinks it’s an ex-boyfriend, and he lies to her and does something that would have derailed the entire story if he had succeeded.
Meanwhile, Emily Blunt overacts, Josh O’Connor underacts, and Colin Firth stumbles around the entire film with that look on his face like he crapped his pants and is now trying to hide it because he can’t go home and change. But everyone knows, Colin. Everyone knows.
The filmmaking aspects of Disclosure Day are impressive, and they should be, considering Steven Spielberg’s illustrious career and the people he continues to work with, but the story feels so elongated for no reason, with no real conclusion, and the dialogue and humor are so awful when there is so much of each.
Disclosure Day is playing in theaters.
