Disclosure Day review: Steven Spielberg’s flimsy alien drama feels like a drab X-Files episode ★★☆☆☆
Josh O’Connor plays Daniel, a cyber-security specialist working for Wardex, a powerful organisation created to keep alien-related information hidden from the public. The setup immediately recalls Men in Black, though without the comic tone and playful energy. Daniel’s role inside the company has given him access to sensitive material, and he ultimately decides he wants to expose the truth rather than keep it buried.
The story follows Daniel as he prepares to reveal the information he has stolen, but the process is unexpectedly cumbersome. He spends time driving around with his girlfriend, Jane, played by Eve Hewson, while waiting for approval from his associate Hugo, portrayed by Colman Domingo. Instead of simply releasing the footage online, Hugo insists that the material should be sent to a local television news channel. That choice feels strangely outdated in a world defined by instant digital sharing and social media. The film presents this as a serious step in the disclosure process, but the premise suggests a belief that traditional television remains the most effective way to break a major story.
This detail gives the film a nostalgic, old-fashioned quality. It appears to imagine a media landscape closer to the era of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, when television was still the dominant public platform and the internet did not yet shape how information spread. That sense of delay and analog procedure runs through the narrative and adds to the feeling that the film is rooted in an earlier cinematic worldview.
At its core, the film centers on secrecy, revelation, and the tension between corporate control and public knowledge. Wardex exists to suppress the truth about extraterrestrial life, while Daniel’s decision threatens to disrupt that control. The idea of “Disclosure Day” becomes a turning point in which hidden information may finally be made public, but the mechanics of that disclosure are deliberately slow and bureaucratic. Rather than a fast-moving whistleblower thriller, the film leans into a more measured, slightly absurd chain of events.
The cast anchors the concept with strong performances from O’Connor, Hewson, and Domingo, whose characters are caught in a story that mixes science fiction, conspiracy, and media satire. But the film’s tone seems less interested in contemporary urgency than in a retro-style adventure about what happens when secrets about aliens can no longer stay hidden.
Overall, Disclosure Day presents a familiar sci-fi premise in a way that feels both serious and strangely outdated. It is a story about exposing the truth, but it does so through a world of corporate secrecy, televised revelation, and a worldview that seems to belong to an earlier era of blockbuster filmmaking.
