Well, here’s a film you did, and didn’t, expect. Steven Spielberg’s return to the genre that made him who he is could have been a big deal — in fact, if you read the majority of the reviews, it kinda is. But then, there’s always an outlier, like the one you are reading.

Now, I’m not saying that Disclosure Day is a bad film — Spielberg doesn’t make bad films. Though it has been years, I even enjoyed his big, unfunny, Second World War disaster 1941. But that was 1979, and Spielberg was just starting out. This is 2026, and Spielberg has long turned the curve on his prime — the era spanned from 1993 and Jurassic Park, to 2017’s The Post (with a few less-than-stellar entries, such as The BFG).

Disclosure Day, after the good-enough — though unsatisfactory — West Side Story and The Fablemans, tells a tale we’ve all seen before. By itself, the seen-it-before wouldn’t have been a problem if it didn’t carry a great, big dose of hokum — one that undermines the seriousness of what could have been a truly unique, time-relevant story.

Starting in the unlikeliest of locations for a Spielberg film — a wrestling ring and its riled-up audience — we meet Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor, Wake Up Dead Man), a cybersecurity expert working for a US government-sanctioned agency.

Director Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day would have been better and more engaging if he had chosen seriousness over unimaginative, childish ideas

Jumping right into the thick of it — an aspect I love about Spielberg, since it forces us to learn who these people are as the narrative unfolds — we learn that Daniel has stolen extraterrestrial tech, along with the entire library of classified footage confirming the presence of aliens on Earth. By proxy, Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson, Jay Kelly), a former nun-in-training who lost her calling, is also caught up in the mess.

While the two escape Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), the head of the Wardex Corporation that exclusively handles ET research for the US government, we switch to the second main character: Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt). Margaret is a local TV meteorologist/weather girl in Kansas City, who doesn’t like the shimmying she does on TV.

As Daniel escapes, Margaret realises that she can speak in different languages — including a chittery one that only Daniel can understand — look into people’s minds and, when caught, “convince” them to let her go by taking on the guises of loved ones (yes, it’s a stretch!). When Scanlon’s authorities arrive, she flees like Daniel; their destination and aid is Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), another former defector from Scanlon’s outfit.

The escapes get a little tiring after a while, and the big reveal in the climax — especially the explanation of the reasons why Daniel and Margaret have these abilities — and this feels like a by-product of The X-Files. Pretty soon, one realises that there’s little to ‘disclose’ in Disclosure Day.

I expected more from screenwriter David Koepp — someone whom I absolutely love (Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way, the first Mission: Impossible, the first Spider-Man, Panic Room, War of the Worlds, the last two Indiana Jones films). Koepp’s screenplay has many really cool scenes that give Blunt, O’Connor, Hewson and Firth room to deliver strong performances. However, there is also a lack of ingenuity and genuine intrigue.

Every so often, you get a number of those ‘really cool scenes’ with good ideas that Spielberg delivers with perfection. But they lack the expected technical panache of the director and his go-to cinematographer, Janusz Kamiński.

The intrigue of Spielberg’s camera moves has lost its sharpness and sheen in the last few years. Most of what we see here is an emulation of his good ol’ days. Emulation doesn’t cut it when we’re talking about the greatest living director in the world.

Rather than choose the adventure-format — one lacking in gravity and stakes — Disclosure Day would have been a better, more engaging film, if it chose seriousness over unimaginative, childish ideas. Now, I’m not talking about infantile wish-fulfilment — that’s something he used to ace (see aspects of it in Catch Me If You Can, Hook and A.I. Artificial Intelligence), with ‘used to’ being the main term here.

Released by Universal Pictures and HKC Films, Disclosure Day is rated PG — the film is made for families but, like all aspects of the story, one didn’t need to disclose it.

The writer is Icon’s primary film reviewer

Published in Dawn, ICON, June 21st, 2026