After a career spanning more than 50 years and making some of the most celebrated sci-fi films of all time, it would be fair for movie lovers to feel apprehensive when a new Steven Spielberg UFO film is announced. Could Disclosure Day have something new to say that wasn’t already explored in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or E.T., or War of the Worlds? His fifth collaboration with screenwriter David Koepp plays the hits explored in those, and other well-regarded sci-fi films – Contact and The Day the Earth Stood Still first come to mind – but still feels like a worthwhile, engaging, and best of all, original experience. Spielberg has been our most curious filmmaker, exploring what would happen when everyday adults and children encounter the extraordinary, and it’s this curiosity which carries Disclosure Day from beginning to end.

Are we alone in the universe? What kind of temperament would any extraterrestrial visitors have once they encountered humanity? What lengths would we go to in order to keep the secret? Disclosure Day explores all of these ideas with Spielberg’s trademark sense of wonder, filtered through a modern lens that grapples with modern sensibilities. To fully ground the film, we focus mostly on cybersecurity expert and ex-con Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), and Kansas City weather anchor Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), and their quest to disclose the truth to the world.

Kellner is on the run with his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) after stealing deeply classified evidence and technology related to humanity’s encounters with alien life. Turns out the world’s most sought-after answer lies at Wardex, a Virginia-based shadow organization/tech company run by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). The devil is in the details, and if Disclosure Day is lacking in details, it’s regarding what exactly Wardex does outside of maintaining secrets and surveilling Americans – note that they’re pointedly not a government entity. This doesn’t kill the mood of the film overall, as Firth makes Scanlon an enigmatic figure regardless. One incredible sequence comes as Kellner and Jane are in hiding in the countryside, when Scanlon uses a piece of alien technology to interrogate where they’re hidden.

But Disclosure Day belongs mostly to Blunt, a restless TV weather anchor whose musician boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) has just gotten over their recent move from Dallas. When a wayward cardinal wanders into their industrial-style apartment, Margaret disassociates and can do things like read minds and speak foreign languages at the drop of a hat. It’s not long before her unusual behavior catches the attention of Scanlon, Kellner, and Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) – Kellner’s partner-in-crime and coordinator for their plan. Blunt is somehow able to navigate all of Margaret’s conflicting emotions and newfound abilities without going overly broad. Rather, it feels like something long buried has just come to the surface.

With conspiracy thrillers, it can be perilous to withhold the biggest bombshell until it’s too late and the audience has lost interest. Koepp dangles enough information throughout Disclosure Day‘s 146 minutes, and the film is littered with enough exciting set pieces, plus Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kominski’s trademark fluid visual style, to keep audiences from getting bored, but one almost wishes that the film had narrowed its focused just a little more. Consider the subplot concerning Jane’s former life as a nun in training, and their brief stay at her monastery while on the lam. Disclosure Day is smart enough to know that the argument over extraterrestrial life and how it would affect organized religion is already well discussed territory by now to make it a small part of the film, but it kind of feels like the film was building to something greater.

Ultimately, Disclosure Day is a film that knows that we, as people, just don’t want to feel alone. Never does this message come across as saccharine or unearned, but it’s in the details of the connections between Kellner and Margaret. It’s in the mounting tensions heard throughout news broadcasts of the possibility of World War III. It’s in Spielberg’s infamously great blocking, and his use of space between characters to indicate their closeness. Some of the best images of the year come from his use of reflections through windows and mirrors. Surely there was some trepidation on Spielberg’s part that he’d be reheating the ideas from his aforementioned films, but Disclosure Day could only have come from him and his intrinsic curiosity.

Universal Pictures will release Disclosure Day in theaters nationwide on June 12.

OSCAR POTENTIAL:

• If nothing else, John Williams is all but assured a nomination for Original Score. After receiving one for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, it’s clear that he can get nominated for anything.
• Previous nominee Emily Blunt has an outside shot at a Best Actress nomination. I don’t know what the upcoming slate of contenders looks like, but if the field is thin enough, it could happen.
• As for the film overall, I’m more apprehensive. 2026 is looking to be a banner year for blockbusters, even with perennial favorites like cinematographer Janusz Kominski.