It all builds up to a final five minutes or so where you can see how most of the film’s semi-meager (by today’s blockbuster standards) budget of $115 million was spent. I won’t give anything away, but there are basically two payoffs. One of them is semi-interesting but rushed; the second is absolutely preposterous.
I wish this was a spoiler review, because I really want to go off on how the last note of this movie is so incredibly stupid. Because of the Code of the Movie Critic, I will keep my mouth shut, but holy shit, is it ridiculous.
Because most of the money went into the final few minutes, the CGI effects of animals are abysmal. They look like cartoon characters rather than real beings—and this is in a movie by a guy who made CGI dinosaurs look realistic more than 30 years ago. A racoon in this movie looks like it was lifted from a kindergartener’s coloring book.
I don’t consider the following gripes to be spoilers because they are in the trailers or commercials for the film. As mentioned, most of the movie deals with typical chase-scene tropes, including this highly implausible sequence: Daniel and Margaret are trying to get on a train from their car, which just got hit and is being dragged by said train. Does the conductor notice that he has hit a car and is dragging it along? Nope … the lengthy scene is allowed to play out while the world’s very worst train conductor is oblivious.
Then there is a sequence in which a crop circle magically forms around Daniel. Why does this happen? Absolutely no reason is given. He is on his phone; tensions are heightening; the crop circle forms. No great theory about the origins of crop circles is offered … it just happens.
If you are eying this movie because you dig UFO conspiracy theories and old-school Spielberg alien-movie vibes, you will be severely let down. This movie shouldn’t be called Disclosure Day. It should be called Oh Shit, Colin Firth Is Coming to Get Me!
I’m going to let Elliott looking into the sky and crying, as E.T. leaves him to return home, be the final, defining moment of Spielberg’s alien films. As for Disclosure Day, I’m going to purge this whole misguided mess from my brain.