Disclosure Day is great. But Spielberg overestimates our capacity for empathy

Steven Spielberg has turned his long fascination with alien life into another big-scale film. In Disclosure Day he follows cybersecurity expert Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) as they become state‑secret whistleblowers, joining Hugo (Colman Domingo) to expose nearly eight decades of evidence that the US government has known about extraterrestrial life.

The files are stolen from Wardex, the organisation run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) where Daniel and Hugo used to work. The stolen footage shows US organisations meeting alien lifeforms and, disturbingly, exploiting, vivisecting and killing them. When that material is shown to Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) it reduces her to tears and triggers crises of conscience and faith, and later a broadcast clip brings traffic to a standstill and prompts a newscaster to apologise for streaming without warning.

United States

disclosure day, steven spielberg, josh o'connor, emily blunt, colin firth, colman domingo, wardex, extraterrestrial life, us government, whistleblowers