Disclosure Day (2026) is Out of Touch

Having helped create the term ‘blockbuster’ with the enormous success of Jaws (1975), it’s fair to say Steven Spielberg has become emblematic of major studio filmmaking, one of the foundations of modern American mythmaking. His movies often locate conflict within a few corrupt individuals, suggesting that once they are exposed, the system can return to functioning as intended. Disclosure Day is burdened by that same naiveté. It feels anachronistic, a holdover from a time when things like Watergate genuinely felt earth-shattering; but it rings hollow in an era where surveillance apparatuses and war crimes are now open secrets. The question is no longer what happens if the truth comes out—it’s what happens after it does and nothing changes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCYT8vb2siQ

         Following a group of government employees trying to leak secrets about the US government’s knowledge of aliens, it’s a film whose premise reflects a misplaced optimism. Even the title seems to feed into the idea that revelation will result in leaders and institutions responding appropriately, the population awakening, power retreating. Humanity has had several ‘disclosure days,’ and while people are certainly more aware, we seem to be living through an odd disconnect between our institutions and popular will since most Americans disagreed with the war in Iran, yet it was waged anyway. The liberal political logic of Spielberg’s plot, showing a paramilitary group literally laying down their arms thanks to the power of empathy, reads as something more at home in the era of Close Encounters (1977), when Neo-liberalism was just emerging on the world stage. The visuals feel just as bizarre.

         Far from the miniatures and matte paintings of Close Encounters, some of the CGI in this movie looks absolutely brutal. Instead of the puppetry and animatronics used in E.T. (1982), we get digitally rendered animals that don’t just look fake, but their digital nature has a less tactile feel, which was a big part of what gave Spielberg’s older work so much warmth and charm. Rendered through a modern digitized filter, it feels a lot less personal, and there are several moments where it appears that the abundance of digital effects affected the lighting, giving us a lot of flat, lifeless frames. These aesthetic choices seem to mirror the script’s disconnect from reality: just like the script confuses disclosure with accountability, its visual effects substitute computerized simulacra with physical presence. With a story so flawed and such shoddy visuals, the actors’ performances were bound to suffer.

         David Koepp wrote all the characters flatly, perhaps to help viewers project themselves into the well-intentioned everymen onscreen, but it did quite the opposite for me. Emily Blunt feels rigid for a role so dynamic, sometimes struggling with the humor that was shoehorned into moments where it didn’t fit. Josh O’Connor’s understated style—which is great in quiet indie films like The Mastermind (2025)—disappears under the demands of blockbuster spectacle. Even Coleman Domingo, typically one of the most magnetic actors working today, didn’t seem to buy the lines he was delivering. There’s no cast alive capable of navigating this much exposition and sentimentality.

         Disclosure Day feels like it’s about a decade too late. Modern audiences don’t lack information; leaks, whistleblowers, and globally-viral footage are an almost daily occurrence. The tragedy isn’t that the truth remains hidden, but that its exposure does nothing to produce consequences for those wielding power. Spielberg’s film makes exposing the truth an endpoint when it now feels like the beginning. In that sense, Disclosure Day is less a vision for our political moment than a nostalgic fantasy. If you're looking for a big sci-fi romp to start the summer, I'd recommend Boots Riley's I Love Boosters; you can find my review for that movie here!