Disclosure Day

Disclosure Day does not open the way you I would expect a modern, first contact movie to kick off. It subverts the usual bombastic planetary invasion tropes right out of the gate. The movie leans heavily into deep cut ufology lore, and utilizing the legendary rumor of President Nixon taking Jackie Gleason to Homestead Air Force Base to view recovered alien bodies is an absolutely brilliant touch. The underlying concept is undeniably thought provoking. It promises a narrative built on almost eighty years of suppressed archival footage, spanning from the 1947 Roswell era all the way to modern day. But all that glitters isn't gold, as they say.

A fantastic premise does not excuse lazy execution. First, we have to talk about the sheer lack of basic human survival instincts in this script. During the primary encounter sequence, our protagonist sees a massive, terrifying anomaly and decides to just keep walking closer to it. Run to the tree line, man. If you are standing in an open field and a craft defying the laws of physics appears, you break your line of sight and seek immediate cover. You do not just slowly walk toward it like a (poorly rendered) deer waiting to be abducted.

The lack of character logic bleeds directly into the structural pacing. Halfway through the runtime, the script is still focused on world building. We are still setting up the mystery when we desperately need to be exploring the consequences and stakes. The narrative is stuck in an endless first act, spinning its wheels instead of getting to the actual point.

Then there is the visual effects problem. It genuinely hurts to say this, but even Steven Spielberg seems to have forgotten how he made CGI so utterly convincing decades ago. Modern digital effects lack the physical weight and practical lighting references that made his earlier nineties sci-fi work feel so grounded. Instead of awe inspiring ships with true scale, we get weightless, glossy pixels that look completely disconnected from the physical environment. Not to mentionthe uninspiriingly generated wildlife. If you told me these were the same artists who created the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull gopher, and are owed money by Speilberg, I wouldn't question that in the least. These animal avatars add absolutely nothing to the story either, so it's questionable why they are here at all.

The script also relies on one of the absolute laziest tropes in science fiction. The female lead touches a highly complex, otherworldly piece of alien technology one single time and is suddenly an expert at operating it. There is no trial and error. There is no learning curve. She just instantly knows how to use the flashy alien tech because the plot desperately needs her to move to the next set piece. Unearned proficiency completely shatters any sense of immersion. Especially when we've heard whispers of how much trouble it's caused others.

Speaking of shattering immersion, how do you make a legacy UFO movie regarding global disclosure and not include a Richard Dreyfuss cameo? It is a massive, unforgivable missed opportunity for a Close Encounters of the Third Kind nod. There are some footage shown at the end that could be argued it's from that moment, but that's as far as it goes.

Instead of a grand payoff, the movie goes out on an absolute whimper. After two hours of agonizing buildup, the grand revelation amounts to a vague, pseudo-intellectual plea to simply listen. It is not profound. It is just empty screenwriting. I was left feeling completely wanting and unsatisfied. Disclosure Day promised to finally open the extraterrestrial vault, but it ultimately delivered absolutely nothing of substance.