Steven Spielberg has spent decades making films about extraterrestrials. I think he’s always been talking about us instead.
In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he was talking about curiosity. In E.T., about childhood. In War of the Worlds, about fear. He has always used what comes from the sky to explore what happens here on Earth.
So I walked into Disclosure Day expecting another story about humanity making contact with a higher intelligence. Instead, I left feeling that Spielberg was trying to tell something much closer to home and, at the same time, much more unsettling.
Because Disclosure Day isn’t about an alien invasion. It’s about a humanity that has forgotten how to listen to itself and I think that’s the film’s central idea.
We live in an era where everyone has an opinion, where information travels faster than ever before, and where, paradoxically, finding common ground has become increasingly difficult. No one listens, everyone responds before they understand, and everyone feels the need to be right. The aliens end up functioning merely as a mirror, they don’t come to conquer the planet. They come to show us what we’re becoming.
The problem is that this idea never finds a screenplay capable of fully supporting it.
Many of the film’s resolutions arrive too quickly or rely on coincidences the story itself never properly sets up. Some characters disappear for long stretches of the narrative only to return when the plot needs them to solve a conflict, and that weakens the emotional impact of several key moments.
It’s a strange feeling because Spielberg still proves that there is probably no one alive who stages a scene quite like he does.
There’s a sequence involving two trains that, for me, perfectly captures why he remains one of the greatest directors of all time. Everything is visually clear, we never lose our sense of space. Every camera movement has a purpose, the editing builds tension without ever confusing the audience, and Spielberg doesn’t need to hide the action behind twenty cuts per second or overwhelm the screen with digital effects, the sequence is constructed with the precision of classic Hitchcock: we always know where every character is, what danger they’re facing, and why every decision raises the stakes. It’s a masterclass in visual storytelling, which is precisely why it’s impossible not to feel that the film deserved a stronger script.
I also had mixed feelings about the performances.
Emily Blunt, an actress who usually conveys so much with so little, never completely convinced me here. Her character never seems to find a clear identity and often feels trapped between the screenplay’s competing ideas. I felt something similar about Daniel. The film places enormous weight on his shoulders, but his presence never fully carries that responsibility.
Hugo, on the other hand, quickly becomes the true heart of the story. Every time he speaks, it feels as though he stops being a character and becomes Spielberg’s own voice. Through him emerge the questions the director has been asking for decades: What happened to empathy? Why did we stop trusting one another? And when did we begin seeing those who are different as threats instead of opportunities to understand something new?
Another aspect I found particularly fascinating is the way Spielberg uses religion.
Margaret is presented almost as a messianic figure,when the twelve characters kneel before her and she tells them she doesn’t want to be a goddess, the biblical parallel is unmistakable. But I think the film is aiming for something far more interesting than a simple religious reference. Margaret doesn’t represent divinity, she represents empathy.
It’s as if Spielberg is suggesting that the real miracle is no longer the arrival of a higher being, but the possibility of understanding one another again in a world increasingly dominated by fear, polarization, and the constant need to be right.
Unfortunately, that idea never reaches its full potential either.
Much of that thematic weight seems to fall on Janet, but the character is completely underused. She disappears for much of the final act, and when she finally returns, it’s only to solve the power outage through the device that allows the final message to be transmitted. It’s a resolution that feels far too convenient for a film that had been asking much more complex questions.
And I think that’s where Disclosure Day’s greatest contradiction lies, it’s directed by one of the greatest storytellers in the history of cinema, yet its screenplay never reaches the same level of greatness as its direction.
There are brilliant scenes. there are ambitious ideas, there are moments when Spielberg reminds us that he still has complete mastery of the cinematic language. But they never quite come together to become the great film they could have been.
And yet, I keep thinking about the ending. Because beyond the extraterrestrial revelation, Spielberg once again asks the same question that has echoed throughout nearly all of his filmography.
Are we still capable of trusting one another?
Can we still listen before we judge?
Can we still look at someone different without immediately turning them into an enemy?
Maybe that’s why Spielberg once again lifts his eyes toward the sky not because he’s still searching for life on other planets, but because he’s still searching for traces of humanity on our own. And then we realize that, once again, the aliens were never really the point.
It was always us.