Disclosure Day review: Emily Blunt steals the show in gripping sci-fi thriller
Steven Spielberg has explored the alien theme twice before, in E.T. the Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and after a 44-year hiatus, he returns to this subject in Disclosure Day.
The film stars Josh O’Connor as Daniel, a cybersecurity expert who has gone rogue from his company Wardex, taking a mysterious device and whistleblowing footage that proves the existence of aliens. After managing to evade Wardex boss Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), Daniel and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) have to go into hiding before they can be reunited with Daniel’s former colleague and fellow Wardex defector Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), who is leading the charge to disclose this information to the public. Wardex obviously doesn’t want this and tries to track down Daniel and Jane by any means necessary.
Disclosure Day cuts between Daniel’s story and that of Kansas City TV weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), who starts exhibiting weird behaviour. She is able to speak new languages and has the uncanny ability to read people’s minds. After her bizarre appearance on the news goes viral online, both Noah and Hugo are determined to track her down, knowing she’s important to their causes, but Margaret has her own calling about where she needs to go. Naturally, these parallel storylines come together eventually.
Spielberg drops us right into the action and we have to play catch-up. Who are these people, what is ‘the device’, and what the heck is going on? We gradually learn as we go, with Jane being a very helpful outsider and the audience’s window into this world. I had a lot of questions – and I’m not sure it answered them all in the end – but I was gripped by the mystery. The start and end are the strongest sections, but it lags a bit in the middle when it becomes a cat-and-mouse chase, with Wardex constantly after Daniel.
As can be expected in Spielberg films, there are exciting action setpieces, pops of humour, clever visual moments and sci-fi concepts, and impressive practical effects (the CGI is a bit more obvious). He’s crafted some truly incredible archival footage of aliens and UFOs that provoke a sense of awe and wonder. I know they’re fake, but they felt real. Despite its modern setting, it feels quite old-school, like something Spielberg would have made in the ’90s or early 2000s, which is not a bad thing, and the story comes together in a spectacular way that made me cry. But then it ends on a note I didn’t like much at all!
Blunt is outstanding here. The film is more compelling when she’s on screen and I cared about Margaret’s journey the most. Not only does Blunt slip in and out of different languages like it’s nothing, but she also has a couple of emotionally heavy scenes where Margaret is overcome by the weight of her new abilities. O’Connor, best known for indies, is solid, but his performance is perhaps not big enough for the scale of the film. Firth is in evil mode, Domingo is calm and in control, and Hewson poses an interesting debate about whether people will cope with this knowledge and if it’ll affect their relationship to God. Also, shout-out to Courtney Grace for making me cry as a news anchor during a pivotal moment.
Disclosure Day doesn’t always work, but Spielberg knows how to make blockbuster cinema. There’s a lot to process and digest, and I think I’d appreciate it more on a second watch, with more context and understanding.
In cinemas from Wednesday 10th June