Disclosure Day Parent Guide

Television meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) doesn’t know what is happening to her. She can suddenly read people’s minds and speak languages she hasn’t learned. To make matters worse, she freezes on air and starts to speak in clicks before passing out. Then suspicious men who claim to be FBI agents lurk outside her hospital room…

Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) knows exactly what’s going on. The computer expert has worked for the mysterious quasi-governmental agency Wardex for several years and just absconded with top secret video files. Daniel is tired of keeping the agency’s secrets and is convinced that the world has the right to know basic facts about the universe that the US government has hidden for almost 80 years. Now Daniel is on the run, determined to protect both his flash drives and girlfriend (Eve Hewson) from Wardex chief Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) who will stop at nothing to prevent the public disclosure being planned by Daniel and Hugh Wakefield (Colman Domingo), another Wardex defector. Within days, Margaret and Daniel find themselves together trying to stay alive, protect his data, and share their knowledge with the world.

Watching Disclosure Day is a reminder that Steven Spielberg knows how to make movies that people want to watch. This film is fast moving (despite its two-and-a-half-hour runtime), tense, and consistently exciting. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire show and, best of all, never knew what was coming next. So many movies are formulaic and dull, but Disclosure Day does a wonderful job of keeping the audience guessing.

The film’s success is based first on its stellar cast. Emily Blunt delivers a standout performance, uncertainty and fear hardening into steely determination. Her emotions are so raw, so unfiltered, that they make the implausible story feel real. Colin Firth also provides a great antagonist, with his own fear and loss fueling his actions. This reduces the cartoon villain vibe, giving us instead a damaged person who is as human as he is reprehensible. The rest of the cast measure up to these performances, making this sci-fi flick feel emotionally grounded and relatable.

Like Spielberg’s other alien movies, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Disclosure Day doesn’t obsess over sci-fi gimmicks. Spielberg and his co-writer David Koepp know that it’s the human story that grabs audiences and that’s what they deliver. This is a tale about how we encounter earth-shattering change, how humans adjust our paradigms, and how we fear or embrace new knowledge. There’s a particularly telling moment when Noah Scanlon justifies Wardex’s determination to keep the secret material sealed. “The archive is a virus against which the world has no immunity,” he says, attempting to justify his determination to hide truth from the people of the world. The film might well fuel conspiracists, but I think it’s more beneficial as a catalyst for questioning not just institutional cultures of secrecy but close-mindedness of all kinds. 

Parents can be assured that the movie’s PG-13 rating is fair. There is no sex or onscreen substance use, and profanity clocks in at about 30 curse words. Violence is the real issue, with repeated car chases, gunshots, and moments of peril. There are also frightening scenes where a character is “possessed” via technology and forced to do things she doesn’t want to do. (Spoiler: Some viewers will be disturbed by a scene of frightened children undergoing an alien procedure that gives them special powers or a brief scene of an alien screaming in pain while undergoing a procedure that looks like torture.) None of the violence feels gratuitous but is in service of the plot. Any teen who can sit through a Marvel movie will be fine in Disclosure Day. Sci-fi fans of any age and broader audiences looking for a popcorn movie that will make them think, can buy a ticket with confidence, sure that they will enjoy Spielberg’s latest cinematic achievement.