“If you do this, there’s no undoing it.”

Disclosure Day is Steven Spielberg’s latest film, and was one of my most anticipated films of the entire year because of that. With that being said, I was also a bit cautious going into it because not only were the trailers a little lackluster (which keep in mind, doesn’t necessarily reflect the movie), but the reviews, while highly leaning positive for the critics, were a little bit on the mixed side with audiences. I didn’t really read much into them beforehand, but I assumed from the ratings that this was either going to be an absolute home run or a pretty ambitious but ultimately disappointing film. I am more than pleased to say that I would align myself with the former.

This was easily the most riveted and awestruck that I’ve been in a theater the entire year. Before diving in, I should probably say that a lot of the reactions regarding the religious themes around this movie made me pretty cautious and worried going in, particularly that it was going to put me off as a Christian myself. The central story is about Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), in addition to a side character named Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who go rogue from their corporation in order to reveal secrets about extraterrestrial life to the public. However, what Disclosure Day is really about and ultimately exploring is this: how would the world actually react? Would it break people’s religious beliefs? Would it invalidate the existence of God? These questions really intrigued me, but I was at the same time extremely worried that the movie would answer that last question with a “yes,” which would obviously make the movie pretty blasphemous.

Thankfully, Disclosure Day doesn’t do that at all, because it is much more thought-provoking than it is explicitly answering questions, and I couldn’t have been happier with that writing choice. I know Spielberg is Jewish, but I don’t really know what he and his co-writer, David Koepp, believe, but I am thankful that they didn’t inject any explicitly atheist beliefs into the story. I have to be honest, I still don’t really know if everything here aligns super well with Christianity and the Bible because a lot of it is very ambiguous, but there wasn’t anything that made me raise an eyebrow or feel convicted in any particular way. In fact, there are numerous moments where it almost seemed like Spielberg was trying to make it clear that the existence of aliens wouldn’t invalidate religion, such as a character asking the popular question of why God would create such a big universe with no life outside Earth.

Intertwined with that is a mystery that had me heavily intrigued throughout the entire runtime. To the best of my knowledge, what motivated Spielberg to tell this story was all the heavy skepticism and questions that people have had, especially in recent years, about the potential of the government hiding proof of extraterrestrial life from the public. Whether the government is actually doing that or not isn’t the point because Disclosure Day treats it as if it were true and also adds an extremely interesting mystery to it. Both Emily Blunt’s Margaret Fairchild, a meteorologist, and Josh O’Connor’s Daniel Kellner start experiencing strange sensations and develop abilities that got me invested immediately. While I did have to do a little internet research after leaving the theater to completely understand where it eventually went with that, the journey and conclusion kept me invested from start to finish.

This also works remarkably well not only as a piece of science fiction but as a thriller, too. The mystery inherently adds thrills, but for people who want more than that, there is plenty. The whole endgame is decided on whether or not Margaret and Daniel can get away from the corporation trying to hide all this information, and eventually reveal it all to the public, so yes, this is quite literally a chase movie that I thought worked incredibly well. There is plenty of action throughout that delivered the best thrills of the year so far, which is funny because the heavy action bits in the marketing were the least interesting bits overall to me. I thought that they might feel out of place, but they didn’t whatsoever.

The alien stuff, well, it’s just as incredible and terrifying as you would hope. Every revelation had my jaw on the floor and had a sense of major importance and a word that I don’t think I’ve ever used in my life, gravitas. If you think that the trailers showed too much with this, don’t worry, because I had the same thoughts, and every big scene still landed with just as much impact as clearly intended. There are also far more surprises than what was in the trailers.

The performances are great all around, but the highlight by a landslide is definitely Emily Blunt, who turned out the best one (again - that I’ve seen) halfway through the year, only behind Jaafar Jackson in Michael. Her acting has always impressed me, especially with movies like Sicario and both of her A Quiet Place entries, but this is easily her best that I’ve seen. The amount of emotion that she needed to convey was incredible, and she perfectly executed all of it. I felt everything she was going through and very much expect a nomination for the Oscars next year.

And even in his nineties, John William still definitely has it, delivering an incredible score. I heard this was a bit of a return to form for him, and I think that’s certainly true. There is a heavy usage of piano music that really helped further the sense of wonder and whimsy that I was already feeling from the story. Call it recency bias, but I honestly think that the piece titled “believe…” is one of his best ever, which is obviously a list already full of countless titles.

I have to be honest, I’ve thought about this movie for quite a while and can’t come up with any significant negatives. Some people seem to be thinking that Disclosure Day bites off more than it can chew, but I couldn’t disagree more. This film is supposed to raise more questions than it answers. My only minor gripe is that the CGI animals weren’t very convincing - everything else looked great.

The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three aren’t out yet, but this is easily my favorite movie of 2026 thus far, surpassing Project Hail Mary.