The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Review of “Disclosure Day”

★★★ 1/2

Handling the Truth: Film Review of Disclosure Day

Illustration by Michael DiMilo

By Geoff Carter

Steven Spielberg has had a long and storied relationship with aliens in his canon of cinematic masterpieces. From the adorable E.T. to the wondrously communicative and benevolent aliens in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind to the horrors of the malignant Martian invaders in his 2005 remake of War of The Worlds, he’s created some of the most iconic films in this cinema subgenre, so it’s difficult not to compare his newest alien film Disclosure Day to his previous works. 

In Close Encounters, Spielberg created a new sensibility about space creatures. These were not the evil or menacing beings like those from Alien, Predator, Independence Day, or Mars Attacks—or any of the multitude of space invasion films of the 1950s and 60s like Earth versus The Flying Saucers or It: The Thing from Another Planet.Spielberg’s space creatures were friendly entities seeking to establish friendly relationships with earthlings. Unlike the alien Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still, they did not come to threaten annihilation in the name of peace, but to study earthlings and to join with them. There is underlying sense of joy, enthusiasm, and optimism in Close Encounters—a sense tinged with wonder—that probably made it one of the most uplifting films of all time. 

Disclosure Day is a little different, opening with a garishly violent scene. The camera dives into a pro wrestling match complete with folding chairs and flying dropkicks, then the camera moves to the audience, zooming in on Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) who is being accosted by two agents of Wardex, a government contractor whose business in concealing the presence of extraterrestrials on Earth. Kellner, who was a cybersecurity specialist at Wardex, has gone rogue and is intending to expose files he has stolen that prove alien existence on Earth to the public. 

To stave off this whistleblower threat, Wardex has kidnapped Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) to force Daniel to return the files, but Daniel, using an alien device, manages to escape with Jane and the files. Daniel gets in touch with Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) the head of the underground organization behind the mission to reveal Wardex, who helps him find a safe house. The head of Wardex Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) uses a similar alien device to gain control of Jane’s mind and reveal their location. The agents close in, but the two again escape.

Meanwhile, local weatherperson Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) has a strange psychic episode after seeing a cardinal fly in her apartment window that gives her the power to read others’ thought and to speak many different languages. During a broadcast, she speaks in a strange language that both Hugo and Noah recognize as an alien tongue. Both men attempt to connect with her and Margaret finds herself mysteriously drawn to Daniel. She intuits his location and the two, attempting to evade Scanlon and Wardex, make their way to Hugo to discover the secret behind Margaret and Daniel’s weird abilities to connect with a reality they cannot remember. 

During all this, it is apparent (almost as background noise) that the world is on the brink of nuclear war. In a scene where Margaret’s boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) is calling the authorities on Margaret, he is in a convenience store being ransacked by a mob frenzied by the fear of a nuclear holocaust. 

While the existence of Wardex is understood as a paragon of the ultimate government cover-up, the trope of the evil governmental (or substitute corporate) bureaucracy seems a bit overworked here. Scanlon’s officers (who somewhat resemble ICE agents sans masks) seem to be there mostly to justify action sequences and to provide a collective antagonist for our heroes. Wild car chases and a train crash sequence seem gratuitous and unnecessary to the plot. Scanlon’s zealousness in pursuing his cause is explained in a rather trite way.

While the idea of a conspiracy theory like Roswell as a reality is a provocative conceit for a movie, the real-world logic of a government contractor going to such extreme lengths to conceal the alien visitors’ existence seems a little implausible (although covering up its own crimes does not). The reasoning Scanlon—and Jane at one point—articulate is that mankind could not handle the idea that aliens have been here before. Jane, who was once a novitiate at a nunnery, is convinced that civilization’s belief systems will break down if the truth is revealed. 

In District 9, another film in which alien visitors are victimized by the people of Earth, their presence is tolerated and accepted by mankind. The aliens are thrown into District 9, a version of a South African township—a setting most familiar to those who lived under apartheid. In this case, civilization was not destroyed by the knowledge of the aliens’ presence; on the contrary, the South African society assimilated the visitors into a discriminatory social system without blinking an eye—which is entirely too believable. 

There are some beautiful moments in the film. The motif of the cardinal as a messenger of the aliens is brilliant, and the sequences in which wild animals (disguised aliens) stop and stare at humans is perfectly in tune with the idea of benevolent otherworldly life forms. Another scene in which the stalks in a wheat field fall around Daniel in perfect example of a crop circle. The scenes in which Daniel and Margaret are returned to their childhood memories are beautifully done.

Daniel and Margaret are driven, like the main characters of Close Encounters, by a psychic impulse implanted in them by the aliens, although it’s never made clear whether the desire to disclose the existence of the aliens to the world is motivated by Hugo and the group’s humanity or by the aliens. They seek out each other and then Hugo in an effort to understand why their minds are not entirely their own anymore.

Emily Blunt is superb as Margaret. Mixing bewilderment, fear, anticipation, and excitement into an entirely believable roller coaster ride of a character, her performance is nothing short of stunning. Josh O’Connor also turns in an excellent performance as Daniel. The supporting cast, particularly Colman Domingo and Colin Forth, are solid. Domingo’s kindliness and Firth’s zealotry dominate every scene they’re in. 

Spielberg’s direction is nothing short of awesome—the work of a veteran artist and storyteller who cannot seem—on occasion—to resist referencing former work, as when the clanging bells at a railroad stop recalls the famous scene from Close Encounters and the train crash itself harkens back to The Fablemans.

The quest for knowledge and the need to reveal the truth is at the core of this movie. The climactic scenes in which the files are opened is not only imbued with vintage Spielberg sentimentality but resonates deeply in our present political climate where chronic lying and the refusal to disclose hidden files divides us deeply as a society and a nation.

The climactic scenes, chock full of communication technology, underlines the fonts of information surrounding us. As they relay the truth of the world to its citizens, it’s easy to see how Wardex manipulated information technology to their own ends. The truth and lies come through the same door. It’s not just in the eye of the beholder, it’s in the hands of those who open and close the doors.