"Disclosure Day", Dir: Steven Spielberg, 2026

Steven Spielberg's fascination with the subject of UFO's/UAP's is very evident in some of his earliest work and clearly he has immersed himself, up to a point, in the subject without ever straying too far into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and pseudo-archeology where the lack of factual information and hard physical evidence leads to a vacuum in which any theory can be put forward, no matter how bizarre and that often straddle the wilder ends of speculative science fiction.

Spielberg is concerned with the facts such as they are around the subject and these form the core of a plot that incorporates recognisable tropes of the subject such as alien abduction and government conspiracies to withhold the truth from the general public and recent calls for the U.S government to release classified files on the whole UFO/UAP subject dating back to the immediate post-war period - hence the title "Disclosure Day", which is something of a misdirection. The story seems more concerned with the phenomenon of disclosure rather than the mechanics and the effect it may have on people around the world than the specifics of UFO's, which was more than amply covered in his earlier film, "Close Encounters of The Third Kind" and here the focus is on the three main characters, played by Emily Blunt ("Margaret Fairchild") as a Kansas City TV weather anchor and Josh O'Connor ("Daniel Kellner") with the third being the menacing "Noah Scanlon" (Colin Firth) as the head of a shadowy organisation, "Wardex", in charge of data and information pertaining to UFO's and tasked with ensuring the information is never allowed to be made public. O'Connor's "Kellner" is a former employee of "Wardex" who, along with 12 other former employees, has accessed the data and seeks to make it public and Firth's "Scanlon" will stop at nothing to ensure this will never happen, resorting to the most extreme measures necessary to do so.

Without offering too many spoilers the film is peppered with many recognisable aspects and tropes of the whole phenomena, including a reconstruction of a supposed meeting between President Nixon and a "Famous 60's TV Comedian" to view recovered alien bodies from a crashed UFO, and if you follow the lore around the subject you will know that the "Famous 60's TV Comedian" was Jackie Gleason of "The Honeymooners" hit TV show and who was a collector of literature on the subject in his spare time, a detail that might have tickled Spielberg hence it's inclusion but that may go over the heads of most audiences.

Once the film gets into it's stride after revealing that Blunt's "Fairchild" is somehow connected to the UFO phenomenon and also to O'Conner's "Kellner" it settles into a fairly routine, for a Spielberg film, action adventure with car chases and jeopardy as the central character's world's are turned upside down by unfolding events, while "Kellner's" girlfriend, a former nun, "Jane Blankenship" (Eve Hewson), is dragged along for the ride and becomes a device by which Spielberg examines the theological implications of the Disclosure phenomenon.

Some of the symbolism in the film may be familiar to anyone who has more than a cursory knowledge of the subject but there is an additional layer resulting from this theological discourse which adds genuine menace in some scenes, amplified by deliberate choices in the lighting design of some shots and performances of the actors. My expectations of the film, being somewhat familiar with the whole subject, were wrong-footed a lot of the time and where it could easily have been a playing by numbers exercise running the gamut of a lot of already familiar territory thanks to the plethora of documentaries on the subject that are already out there, Spielberg and David Koepp's script ensures that there are enough twists and turns in the plot to keep it interesting along with some imaginative flourishes that obviously I won't reveal in this review.

The directors knowledge and love of sci-fi films hits home at the conclusion and this is my only spoiler since it is clear reference to the end line of the 1951 Howard Hawks version of "The Thing From Another World" in being a message to the world, but here it's a different message.

It did make me wonder how such a film could have been made in the pre-mobile phone era since this technology is a pivotal element of the plot and hints at the idea that in the 21st century information can be a weapon in the hands of those in power while the film's protagonists use channels of smartphone communication that are undetectable by the authorities as they struggle to escape their clutches.

In conclusion, I’m sure people will have certain expectations of the film whereas it is a work of imaginative fiction with one foot in the real world and that builds on the director's oeuvre by consciously referencing his earlier films in sequences like cross-country car chases, level crossings and unexpected imaginative flourishes, all to a John Williams score that never ever becomes too intrusive or drifts into leitmotif territory. *I should add that there's always that 1% outside of what everybody already knows about the subject of UFO's/conspiracies etc, and let's face it, there's already a lot out there and has been for decades so it's not as if it's ALL been hidden, but in this film Spielberg isn't really interested in the 1% as a joining the dots exercise, only what already is already known and in the public domain.

"Disclosure Day", Dir: Steven Spielberg, 2026