Disclosure Day feels like Spielberg’s spiritual follow up to his own Close Encounters of the Third Kind, so much so that it feels like a remake: Various “normal” people get access to visions given to them by aliens that make them alienated to others and have to embark on a trip to find the source.
I think Close Encounters is still better because of its unmatched sense of wonder, as Disclosure Day is quite a bit more cynical and had some pacing issues near the beginning. That said, it had a ton of really nice classic cinematic Spielberg alien moments that make the whole ride worthwhile in the end, especially due to its memorable ending.
In fact, I think the only real flaw I can give the movie is that it’s set in the wrong time period (present day). This movie seems to act and behave that it would have been set in the 2000s instead. A real life Disclosure Day happening in the matter shown in the movie would not work at all in real life in the modern day.
Emily Blunt stole the show. She owned every scene she was in and was by far the most interesting character to watch. Her panic attack scene in particular was very hard to watch, in how really well done her performance was.
Even though the movie is just vintage classic Americana scifi alien storylines, I appreciated the inversion of the alien probe trope. Having the aliens being the victims of human probing was an appreciated twist.
I still have John Williams’ theme stuck in my head, so that was good too. The movie also had lots of really impressive camera shots where I wondered how they filmed it and how they achieved it.
As far as the plot goes, I think the imagery of the aliens during Disclosure Day seems like copium that the idea that if the whole world was simply shown the images of genocide and torture (like in Gaza, et al) that the world would stop and acknowledge and do something about it. A suggestion that if it was simply shown on TV, that people would care. But the world simply doesn’t work like it did in the 90s and 2000s, the world would not be suddenly united, and the actual Disclosure Day as it happened would create even more strife than there already was in the movie (especially with the rather interesting subplot in the movie about World War 3 basically about to erupt).
All in all, it was nice to see Spielberg give another go at classic alien storylines.
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