Disclosure Day may not be Steven Spielberg’s best movie, but it is a good one. Part of his space trilogy after Close Encounters and E.T., it too comes back the the theme of aliens and posits what it might be like if those holding the secrets ever release them. Although not a horror film, it makes use of the Bible—not surprisingly since real-life discussions about disclosure often ask about its effects on religion. In the movie, the Wardex Corporation, part of the military-industrial complex, is the keeper of the secrets. They reverse-engineer alien technology, and get to keep what’s found from recovered UAP wrecks. More powerful than the police, they stop and kill without compunction. They control the highest level of secrets that the government has—even those beyond the president. (Spielberg clearly did his homework here, even working in the bit about Jackie Gleason making the claim to have seen alien bodies.)
A couple of Wardex employees, Hugo and Daniel, smuggle out the video proof of the nearly eight-decade cover-up and they plan to release everything to the media. A weather reporter, Margaret, sudden becomes psychic and receives an alien message while on air. Wardex has kidnapped and roughed up Daniel’s girlfriend, former novice nun Jane, to force him to return the stolen data. (Religion plays a big role here.) Noah, the head of Wardex, uses advanced technology to track Daniel, Jane, and Margaret, as they are trying to meet up. When Margaret and Daniel finally do connect, Hugo reveals that they’re both “experiencers”—they’d been abducted as children and had been given extraordinary gifts. Margaret’s abilities are such that she can break into and walk out of a secure military base with Daniel in tow. As they prepare to show the evidence at Margaret’s Kansas City news station, Wardex shuts them down but Jane delivers a device that allows the broadcast to take place. The world, which is on the brink of Armageddon—World War Three—stops to listen and begins to realize that we need to work together to save the human race.
The plot is a bit complex to summarize fully, but this gives the general picture. Disclosure Day is a hopeful movie. The theme has been addressed by proponents of real life disclosure before: sharing this kind of information might well save us. And the religious community, represented by Jane’s former monastery, is perfectly okay with this development. There’s a lot to say about such a film, and I try to constrain my word counts here. It’s the kind of movie that grows better with reflection—the writing is a bit trite in places—and the alien tech is a bit hard to believe. Of course, we don’t know what off-world tech can really do. But at the end of the day, religion plays a major role in the truth being revealed. Worth thinking about.
