By George & Josh Bate
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Disclosure Day
Steven Spielberg’s grand return to the science fiction genre is receiving rave reviews. Sitting at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes as of the writing of this article, Disclosure Day was described as “epic, “intriguing,” and a “stunning achievement” in our review. In this article, we’re going to breakdown exactly what happens in Spielberg’s twisty and, at times, quite dense sci-fi film.
To get things started, let’s first go over the barebones of Disclosure Day’s narrative. The film follows Daniel Kelman (Josh O’Connor), a cybersecurity expert who works for Wardex. The movie begins soon after Kelman has stolen files from his employer that reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life on Earth. The picture and video files, of which there are, detail how President Nixon took pleasure in showing a celebrity of the time bodies of dead aliens, what actually happened in Roswell, and the unethical methods Wardex used to experiment on aliens.
After he manages to keep a hold of the files while rescuing his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) during a tense exchange with Wardex and its head Noah Scanlan (Colin Firth), Kelman goes on the run, first taking shelter at an old monastery before seeking refuge in an isolated farm house in the middle of nowhere.
During his escapades in corporate espionage, Kelman is in constant communication with Hugo (Colman Domingo), the man who hired him at Wardex out of prison years prior. Hugo coordinates Kelman and Jane’s escape from afar as he supervises a mysterious project, which appears to be the construction of a house indoors.
But Kelman is only half of the story. The other half belongs to Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a television meteorologist based in Kansas City. On a seemingly mundane morning, Margaret discusses moving from Kansas City with her husband (Wyatt Russell) when they are visited by a majestic red cardinal bird, who swoops in through their window. While Margaret’s husband finds the whole thing humorous, Margaret appears entranced by its presence and, shortly after, begins speaking fluently in Russian to her husband. The problem? Margaret doesn’t know Russian. She’s never spoken Russian in her life. And after she utters a foreign language that bewilders her husband, she appears unphased (or perhaps unaware) of what just occurred.
A number of other strange occurrences happen to Margaret early on. She gets out of a speeding violation by somehow knowing initiate details about a cop she’s never met before. She also begins speaking fluent Korean to a man in her news station.
Things get decidedly weirder when Margaret begins making strange clicking noises on a live broadcast. She passes out shortly after and is rushed to the hospital, where several suited men claiming to be members of the FBI wait to question her.
But Margaret senses the men aren’t who they say they are. And she senses they want to kill Daniel Kelman, a name she has never heard of before.
Much to the dismay of her husband, Margaret coordinates an escape from the hospital and begins making her way North, not for any reason other than she feels like this is the direction she must head. A brief call with Hugo informs her that she should destroy her phone to avoid potential discovery from members of Wardex wishing to hunt her down due to the noises she made during the weather broadcast.
Back with Kelman and Jane at the farm house, the two disagree about Kelman’s plan to disclose details of aliens’ existence to the world, with Jane citing the potential collapse of established religion as a reason not to take such a drastic measure.
Kelman retreats outdoors, where he takes a call from Hugo. Hugo sends Kelman the video of Margaret making the clicking noises and somehow Kelman is able to understand what she says as if it was English.
In the house, Jane falls under the mind control of Wardex head Noah Scanlan. Scanlan, back at Wardex headquarters, uses an alien device to “dive” into the mind of Jane. He controls her body movements for a few moments before engaging in a full-fledged conversation with her. Jane resists but Scalan is eventually able to get their location out of her. Before he ends their chat, however, Scanlan urges Jane to kill Kelman when she has the chance.
In the nick of time, Kelman receives a call from Margaret, who informs him that their location is compromised. Kelman and Jane barely manage to escape the farm house from the clutches of Wardex’s men. At one point during the escape, Scanlan takes control of Jane again and tries to kill Kelman with a knife she smuggled in the sleeve of her shirt.
Kelman and Jane make their way to a seedy motel, where Jane insists that she is tied up as she poses a danger to Kelman. Scanlan is not able to “dive” into Kelman as he believes Kelman is an “experiencer,” a term we don’t understand the full meaning of until later on.
Unfortunately for them, Jane reveals their location to Scanlan after the Wardex boss makes another dive. Kelman is captured but is able to hand off one of the alien devices – the same alien device that Scanlan uses to mind control – to Jane, who escapes through the woods.
Elsewhere, Margaret leaves her disbelieving husband behind and, almost as if she’s under a trance, makes her way to a military installation. She manages to talk her past the guards, again by somehow knowing intimate details of their personal lives, and walks all the way up to a trailer containing Scanlan and Kelman.
Margaret makes herself appear as Scanlan’s deceased wife for a moment, which gives her enough time to get Kelman out of Wardex’s clutches. She does the same to various soldiers and Wardex employees as they make their way off the base.
After a daring escape aboard a train, Margaret and Kelman finally make their way to Hugo. It is then revealed that Hugo and his team have been building an exact replication of Margaret’s childhood home indoors. Margaret is terrified of what she sees, like the trauma victim afraid to approach memories of a troubled past. She won’t look Hugo in the eyes as he knows everything about her and she most certainly doesn’t want all that information circling in her head.
Eventually, Hugo convinces Margaret and Kelman to sit in Margaret’s room, after which Margaret’s origins are revealed as the two grip onto one of the alien devices.
When she was 10 years old, Margaret awoke in the middle of the night to see a massive deer, fox, squirrel, and birds staring at her in her room.
But these animals aren’t animals. They’re aliens. Little grey aliens (like the ones from The Outer Limits and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), who change their appearance to make themselves look like animals. They do so to appear more friendly and less scary to humans like Margaret
The animals/aliens walk Margaret through the snowy woods outside of her house and to another home, which she calls a Hansel and Gretel house. Inside, she lays down on a table, only for it to be revealed that she is actually inside the aliens’ ship. Next to her on another transparent table is a young Daniel Kelman.
The animals transform into the grey aliens and hold onto Margaret and Daniel’s faces as they place a piece of technology around their eyes and imbue with a host of information. Margaret is afforded the ability to have insights into humankind (hence why she can essentially read minds), whereas Kelman is afforded the ability to speak the aliens’ language (hence why he understood what Margaret said during the weather broadcast).
Snapping out of the flashback, Margaret and Kelman come to terms with aspects of their history they were long unaware of. Hugo speaks with them and reveals that the two of them were chosen as the mediums through which aliens would disclose their existence to the world. It took all the way until that little red cardinal flew into Margaret’s apartment for her to be activated, kicking into gear the aliens’ long-standing plan.
Why do the aliens want the humans to know about them? This isn’t exactly spelled out. Perhaps they want to expose the humans’ mistreatment of them, as seen in a disturbing interrogation video earlier on. Or maybe they simply want to make contact with humans and build relationships. At one point in the movie, Hugo mentions that the aliens believe empathy is the natural next step in human development and that humans have strayed from the course in this regard. It’s possible that the aliens want to communicate with humans as a way to foster empathy and stop them from destroying one another. The world seems to be on the precipice of this as news reports throughout the film suggest that World War III is right around the corner.
Hugo, Kelman, and Margaret then must escape from Wardex forces, who are desperate to stop the impending disclosure day.
They fail, however, as Margaret, Kelman, Hugo, and their allies make their way to Margaret’s news station. Margaret uses her super-human abilities to convince the network head to let her on air for a special broadcast. Kelman loads up the computers with all the files he stole and what ensues is Disclosure Day.
News channels all around the world begin presenting footage proving the existence of aliens. Margaret tells the world how they received the information and that now is the time to reveal the truth.
As the broadcasts continue, the entire world becomes transfixed by what’s transpiring. In an instant, the imminent WWIII has been shelved as the biggest event in human history has just occurred.
After Margaret steps away from the broadcast room, Hugo appears and wheels out a massive grey alien in some kind of a standing plastic bag. The grey alien, who appears old and weathered, steps out of the bag and places its hands on Kelman and Margaret’s shoulders. The whole world watches as the cameras capture what is unfolding.
It is not exactly explained how the grey alien came to be here, but it is implied that Hugo is responsible. Scanlan mentions that there was some kind of security breach five years prior at Wardex, which we suspect was Hugo breaking the alien out of containment and securing it somewhere safe.
The aliens couldn’t do a Disclosure Day by themselves as they seemingly tried and failed to make contact on a number of occasions, including the Roswell incident. But through Margaret and Kelman, they passed along information that drove them to this very point. Everything that has transpired has been the product of meticulous planning from the aliens, with Hugo’s help.
As the film concludes, the grey alien whispers something in Kelman’s ear. Kelman then whispers this in Margaret’s ear. Margaret then assumes a position in front of the audience to address the world again and gets ready to deliver another report.
Then the screen cuts to black.
The ending is certainly a tad jolting and leaves one desperate to know what happens now that the lid has been blown off of Wardex’s secrets. If we had to predict, we’d say that Margaret’s broadcast will relay information to the world about next steps, which likely entail aliens and human leaders meeting up and the aliens conveying the importance of retaining empathy. But we’re not sure. Maybe we’ll get answers to this lingering question if we ever get a Disclosure Day 2.