I’ve now seen Spielberg’s 2026 UFO tale, Disclosure Day, twice. And I know why it took two viewings. No matter how you go into that viewing the idea of Steven Spielberg, the man who gave us E.T. and Close Encounters, returning to the big screen with another UFO story, your expectations are going to be incredibly high.

And that very much impacted my first viewing of the film. I walked out of the theater glad that I had seen the film, but wasn’t in love with much of the film except John Williams’ score. It wasn’t quite as big and magical as I thought/hoped it was going to be.

I also had some problems with the final EBE. In UFO lore we’ve not heard of a really big Grey, but maybe Spielberg leaned that way because if he went small, viewers would think it did tie in with CE3K.

It’s a nitpick, but a relevant one I think seeing as Spielberg knows his UFO lore.

The story follows two leads. First there’s Daniel (Josh O’Connor) and Jane (Eve Hewson) who are being pursued by Scanlon’s (Colin Firth) company Wardex. Daniel has made off with gigabytes of data containing a truth that he feels everyone on Earth should know, and that no one should own, just to keep it a secret.

He’s aided and guided by Hugo Wakefield (Domingo Coleman – an actor I always delight in seeing). Hugo is also in touch with the story’s other lead, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), who, after a strange encounter before work one morning suddenly finds herself empowered with a superior level of empathy and perhaps telepathy as well.

Both she and Daniel end up on the run, being guided by Hugo towards one another. They have a secret they have both forgotten, and through them, and all the material Daniel has stolen they are going to reveal to the world the existence of alien life visiting Earth – it’s Disclosure Day.

The UFO and alien effects created for the files Daniel stole are solid, and look great. The film stumbles a bit with the VFX on the animals that some of the characters find themselves interacting with. But that could be intentional, making them a little cartoony, anthropomorphizing them just a little – according to the lore, aliens often use animals as avatars during contact, most often an owl.

There are some cool set pieces (the train sequence is solid) and a big idea at the heart of the story, but I think everyone wanted just a touch more wonder in terms of the story. There are also some problems with the strange alien tech that Wardex has in their possession, as it seems able to do whatever the story needs to have done. And that’s a little bothersome.

I like Firth in this film a lot; we don’t often get to see him play a baddie. Blunt is engaging as she discovers this new gift she has, and I love the fact that for the broadcast where she starts talking in a strange language, she actually did. She helped create it, and then performed it.

Williams delivers a lovely score, and Spielberg very obviously still has the knack for fantastic filmmaking, but this time out misses a little of the awe and wonder his earlier works inspired. But watching it a second time after you got those expectations out of the way, I liked it a lot more. It’s still not his best even in recent years, but it is solid, and makes me want actual disclosure all the more.

And Spielberg remains my ride or die, though.