A mysterious vocal affliction performed live on the air by a meterologist. A nun who has lost her calling. A government employee with stolen artefacts. And the shadowy agency with limitless funds to track them down.
These are the characters populating director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter David Koepp‘s messy sci-fi title, Disclosure Day
Things get off to a rocky start almost immediately as the film opens with a sting operation on Daniel (Josh O’Connell) at a boxing match. It’s one thing for a film to drop its audience into the thick of the action and ask them to sort it out; it’s another thing to make them question if they’re watching a film within a film (and a bad one at that).
There’s something amiss about the inelegant way this all unfolds: Daniel doesn’t really react to the danger he and girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) are in and the ease with which they escape from government heavy Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) and his Wardex goons is unbelievable, especially when we later learn that Daniel is just a tech guy who has absconded with stolen property.
Disclosure Day settles into more of a rhythm when it introduces Margaret (Emily Blunt), a weather reporter working out of Kansas City who is dating an unambitious musician named Jackson (Wyatt Russell). They’re obviously wrong for each other, but plot mechanics kick in when a red cardinal flies into their ENORMOUS loft and Margaret suddenly begins speaking – seemingly unaware – in fluent Russian. From there she suddenly develops the ability to read people’s minds and know their inner thoughts before falling into a guttural throat clicking trance at work while on camera.
Daniel’s thriller-y plot as he and Jane flee from nefarious black-clad agents while trying to connect with co-conspirator Hugo (Coleman Domingo) feels like the kind of paranoid thriller that was popular in the 70s and 90s. By comparison, Margaret’s story has more of an otherworldly/supernatural vibe and while they’re not completely oppositional in tone, for large swaths of the film’s first half, it feels like a lot of hurry up and wait as the audience patiently waits for the two leads to finally connect.
The result – in fact, the whole film’s thesis – is less of a pay-off than a complete miscalculation. Marketing spoiled most of the surprises about what Daniel is actually carrying, but even when Margaret finally gets an explanation about how she fits into the government/alien cover-up in the back half, it plays like a joke rather than a revelation.
It’s a problem because the way that she and Daniel are interconnected don’t make much sense (why them? Why now?) and what should arguably be one of the film’s most emotionally affecting sequences – when young Margaret is forced to face down her childhood trauma – is sapped of all its power thanks to some truly atrocious CGI animal effects.
The climax set at Margaret’s Kansas news station carries a certain gravitas, if only because newcomer Courtney Grace steals the show as the NBC newswoman whose play by play offers a dose of awe and humanity (albeit at the cost of sidelining Blunt in what should have been Margaret’s big character moment).
In between there are a few other stand-out sequences, including a somewhat exciting car chase through a cow pasture, and a puppeteering/astral projection sequence in which Scanlon takes control of Jane. If these, as well as Spielberg’s pat and hopeful optimism for humanity play like a collection of the filmmaker’s greatest hits, however, it chalks Disclosure Day up as just another uneven title in Spielberg’s late-era filmography.
He’s returned to the idea of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) one too many times throughout his career. One simply wishes that he had something better or more interesting to say with this one.
Special Features on the 4K
In addition to a featurette focusing on Spielberg and his collaborative work with composer John Williams, the Universal disc includes a 54 minute making of featurette entitled “Encountering the Unknown: Inside Disclosure Day.” It’s pretty comprehensive: beginning with Spielberg’s initial story idea and his toast to Assistant Director and co-Producer Adam Somner (who died before filming), it chronicles production on the film all the way through to the final day, including several of the film’s key sequences.
This includes the construction of a 1920s farmhouse that was specifically built in New Jersey with the intent of driving a car through it, as well as the car vs train sequence, which is mostly practical, but made worse by unconvincing CGI in post*. The stunt purportedly originated when Spielberg was making Duel!)
*It’s just a shame that so many of the film’s best moments are marred by often terrible looking visual effects, including many of its alien entities, who are all puppets that have been augmented after the fact.
- Film: 2/5
- Extras: 3/5
Disclosure Day is now available to own on 4K and Blu
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