145 min | PG-13 | June 12, 2026 | Universal Pictures
Spielberg returns to the aliens that made him, and Emily Blunt is his best partner in years. The yarn engages. The philosophy is shoehorned in and thinner than his reputation promises.
Steven Spielberg goes back to the subject that made him. Aliens. Disclosure Day splits its story between a Kansas City weathergirl and a cybersecurity specialist who steals extraterrestrial files from a secret arm of the government. Margaret Fairchild freezes on the morning broadcast, starts speaking in an alien tongue, and discovers she can read minds. Daniel Kellner has the documents that explain why. The two storylines converge into a chase across a country sliding toward war. Spielberg has been here before, from Close Encounters to E.T. to War of the Worlds. This time the wonder arrives with a lecture attached.
Emily Blunt is the reason to see the film. She plays Margaret’s unraveling with precision, selling both the terror of losing control of her own mind and the strange grace of what replaces it. Josh O’Connor gives Daniel a jittery intelligence, and the partnership between the two leads is the film’s strongest element. When Blunt and O’Connor are simply running and figuring things out together, the movie hums. Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Colman Domingo fill the margins. The trouble is the writing around the people. Too many characters act and behave in ways that serve the plot rather than themselves. The behavior is forced. The dialogue turns stilted. Even Blunt cannot smooth every seam.
The craft is exactly what a Spielberg film promises. Janusz Kamiński shoots on 35mm anamorphic and the images carry a warmth and depth digital still cannot fake. John Williams returns to score and the music reaches for the old awe. The set pieces are staged with the clarity of a master who has nothing left to prove on that front. Spielberg can still build a sequence better than almost anyone alive. The problem is never the filmmaking. It is the screenplay’s ambition outrunning its ideas.
David Koepp’s script keeps reaching for a big philosophical question about contact and consciousness and what humanity does with the truth. It shoehorns the theme in rather than earning it, and the result is thinner than Spielberg’s reputation would lead you to expect. The yarn itself is engaging. The partnership at the center works. But the film wants to be profound and settles for gesturing at profundity. Spielberg has made transcendent films about looking up at the sky. This one looks up, clears its throat, and tells you what to feel. The wonder is there. The wisdom is borrowed.