Official Trailer
Rating: 0/10 | Genre: Mystery, Science Fiction, Thriller | Runtime: 145 min
Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo
I walked out of Disclosure Day feeling genuinely frustrated, which is probably not what the filmmakers were going for. The movie has all the ingredients for something really interesting. You’ve got Emily Blunt playing a scientist who stumbles onto proof of extraterrestrial life. You’ve got Josh O’Connor as a government official who wants to keep it quiet. You’ve got Colin Firth doing his thing as some kind of shadowy intelligence operative. The premise is solid. So why does the execution fall so flat?
The problem starts about thirty minutes in when you realize the movie has no idea what it wants to be. Is it a thriller about the conspiracy to hide the truth? Is it a character study about how this discovery affects Blunt’s protagonist personally? Is it a sci-fi movie about first contact? It tries to be all three and ends up being none of them particularly well.
Blunt’s character, Dr. Sarah Chen, discovers alien remains in the Arctic. Instead of going to the press or calling a press conference or literally doing anything proactive, she spends two hours showing the evidence to various people and being told “no, you can’t talk about this.” That’s the entire middle section. Scene after scene of her in offices or parking garages or safe houses having the same conversation. It gets old fast.
Josh O’Connor actually brings some energy to his role as Deputy Director Hammond. He’s the only one who seems to understand the movie should move at some point. But even his performance can’t save dialogue that sounds like it was written by someone who read a Wikipedia article about government bureaucracy once. Everyone talks in clunky exposition. When Hammond says things like “If this goes public, the markets will crash within hours,” it’s meant to feel tense but it just feels like he’s reading off an economic textbook.
There’s a scene about halfway through where Blunt finally shows the evidence to a trusted colleague, and for maybe ten minutes the movie actually works. It’s just two people in a room grappling with the enormity of what they’re looking at. Eve Hewson, playing that colleague, brings real emotion to it. She actually reacts like a human being would if someone just proved we’re not alone in the universe. Then the scene ends and we’re back to watching Blunt look worried in different locations.
The runtime is killing it too. At two hours and twenty-five minutes, this movie needed to cut about thirty minutes of its middle act. There are entire subplots involving Colman Domingo’s character that go absolutely nowhere. He’s a congressman? A senator? I’m still not sure what his actual role was. He shows up, delivers some ominous warnings, then disappears for forty minutes, then shows up again. It’s sloppy editing at best.
The actual revelation of the aliens themselves, when it finally happens near the end, is genuinely disappointing. I won’t spoil it, but the design is kind of generic. The filmmakers clearly spent more time on the conspiracy thriller elements than on making the actual aliens look interesting or alien. You’ve got this massive mystery built up over two hours and then the payoff is underwhelming.
Colin Firth is fine in his role as someone working for an even shadier organization than the government. He’s a good actor so he makes it work, but the character doesn’t have much depth. He’s just there to pose threats and look concerned in expensive suits.
The ending tries to pull off some kind of twist about who actually controls the information, but by that point I’d checked out. I was too tired from sitting through everything else to care about the final act revelations.
Look, I get what the movie is trying to do. It wants to explore what it would actually mean if we discovered alien life. Not the wonder or the scientific breakthrough, but the political fallout. That’s an interesting angle. The execution just isn’t there. It needed tighter writing, faster pacing, and more conviction about what kind of movie it wanted to be. As it stands, Disclosure Day feels like a project that got caught between being a political thriller and a sci-fi mystery and ended up being neither.
If you’re really into slow-burn conspiracy movies, you might get something out of it. But honestly, there are better options. Have you seen anything recently that handled the first contact concept better?
Where to Watch
Streaming availability varies by region. Check your favorite streaming platform to see if this title is available in your country.