The finest alien films often masterfully weave together grounded science fiction with an enticing layer of mystery, drawing audiences into the enigmatic expanse of space. This intrigue surrounding potential extraterrestrial life has long captivated filmmakers, none more so than Steven Spielberg. Over the past five decades, Spielberg has crafted no fewer than four films centered around UFOs, first contact, and alien invasions. This doesn’t even include the TV miniseries “Taken,” which he produced. Even the famed “Indiana Jones” franchise couldn’t escape his fascination with aliens, though that particular choice hasn’t stood the test of time. Now, Spielberg returns to this cosmic theme with his latest sci-fi summer epic, “Disclosure Day,” set to release in 2026, offering arguably his most confounding narrative yet.

Blending elements of a mystery box with a chase thriller, “Disclosure Day” chronicles the journey of mathematical prodigy Daniel Kellner, portrayed by Josh O’Connor, and meteorologist Margaret Fairchild, played by Emily Blunt. The duo uncovers a shared link to alien life on Earth and collaborates with Hugo Wakefield, brought to life by Colman Domingo, to expose decades of hidden evidence and research to the world. However, they must elude the menacing Wardex organization, which is determined to suppress their revelations. Throughout their perilous quest, the iconic scores of John Williams echo, enhancing the tension in a series of dynamic handheld tracking shots.

For viewers familiar with Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” or “Taken,” the themes in “Disclosure Day” may seem familiar. Spielberg’s enduring interest in alien abduction and mythology remains unmistakable, yet the film’s emphasis on broad idealism rather than delving into the specifics of its extraterrestrial beings leaves some narrative gaps. Let’s delve into the most perplexing scenes of the movie to uncover their true meanings.

If you’ve caught any of the trailers for “Disclosure Day,” you’re likely aware of the film’s intriguing animal sequences. Notably, scenes depict deer eerily peering through windows at Daniel, as if under some mysterious influence. This unsettling motif recurs with various animals, including cardinals and foxes, only to be fully explained in the film’s climactic final act.

Even if you’ve only seen the trailers for “Disclosure Day,” you know about the animals — the clips of deer staring hauntingly through a window at Daniel, almost like they’re possessed. This motif occurs throughout the film with cardinals, foxes, and other creatures, and it’s not until the final act that we fully learn what’s going on.

As Margaret recalls her alien abduction from when she was 10 years old, Hugo explains that the aliens take the form of Earth animals when confronting humans in order to make themselves appear less frightening. In the flashback, Margaret is led out of her home by a group of these animals, who then reveal their true forms once she is in the lab aboard their vessel.

Throughout the film, we see that Margaret is able to use the powers given to her by the aliens to present illusions in people’s minds, either making herself appear to be someone they know, or making whole structures and groups of people invisible. The implication in the latter instance is that she isn’t making people disappear, but rather, she is altering the way in which the observers are seeing them. Since the aliens seem to possess similar abilities themselves, it stands to reason that the animal forms are a result of them doing the same psychic trick.

Margaret remembers that she had a traumatic incident when she was 10, but she has blocked all memories of it and chooses not to look back. Daniel hardly mentions anything of the sort, however, until the flashback orchestrated by Hugo reveals he had the same experience. In that scene, the child versions of both characters are shown side-by-side on alien research tables, holding hands as they are imbued with their extraterrestrial powers. But we don’t actually see Daniel get taken from his home as Margaret was, so what’s really happening here?

The best assumption is what the film tells us at face value — that Margaret and Daniel were operated on at the same time, in the same place. They both mention at points earlier in the film that they seem familiar to each other, and this is almost surely why. We also don’t know how long either of them was gone, and that gray area allows for the logistics of the aliens obtaining two kids from totally different places, bringing them together, and then returning them.

Even still, “Disclosure Day” leaves a lot of these details undefined. We never really get Daniel’s side of the story, and we only hear Hugo’s explanation of the aliens’ behavior. The film seems to treat that story as an objective account, but when you’re playing in people’s brains, anything is possible.

One of the more extreme sci-fi aspects of “Disclosure Day” involves the mysterious, peg-like alien artifacts held by Wardex. After Daniel gets away with one of the devices and a full archive of extraterrestrial film footage, Wardex leader Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) straps himself into a high-tech medical rig, squeezes one of the artifacts, and, in his words, “gives himself over to it.” That allows him to focus on an individual person — in this case, Daniel’s girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) — enter her mind, assert some level of mechanical control, and speak with her as if he were there in person.

Or at least that’s what he seems to do. The exact limits of this power remain unclear. Scanlon re-enters Jane’s mind seemingly at will, and there are shots where his body movements are mapped directly onto her. But it’s not entirely apparent whether — as when he compels her to kill Daniel — he’s manipulating her motor functions directly or clouding her mind and persuading her to do his bidding.

Given how Margaret’s powers work, the latter seems more plausible, though Hugo tells Scanlon at one point that the artifacts are capable of far more than what he is using them for. We also learn that “diving” into someone’s brain does not work if they are an “experiencer,” which seems to be a name for someone who has had an extraterrestrial experience and been psychically altered, like Daniel or Margaret. The word implies that there are others, and it’s not fully clear if mere exposure to the aliens makes one immune to diving, or if it’s the mental alterations that block the technique, but the latter makes more sense. That would also presumably preclude the aliens from “diving” on each other.

Wardex has three of the strange alien artifacts in “Disclosure Day,” with two being stolen by Hugo and Daniel at the start of the film. All three look basically the same, from what you can see on screen, and presumably, they all hold similar powers. But that isn’t actually confirmed.

The one artifact left with Wardex is only used by Scanlon to dive, though we know from Hugo that that is a mere piece of what it can do. Larger rigs made up of what appear to be numerous identical devices are shown in the abduction flashbacks, revealed to be how Daniel and Margaret receive their powers. And Margaret uses the two stolen devices at different points for two very different tasks — first to mask Hugo’s group from sight after they are found by Wardex, and then later to restore power KCXE-TV after Wardex cuts it.

The best explanation is that all of these devices are capable of the same broad range of abilities, and that it is simply the skill and knowledge of how to channel them that allows someone to perform one feat or another. But that’s without getting into the many different kinds of UFOs shown in the archive footage — a big question mark given that we only see one type of alien.

We see a lot more of Margaret’s powers than Daniel’s over the course of “Disclosure Day,” and there’s enough context to develop some sense of how they work. The phrase “diving,” used mostly to refer to the psychic invasion made possible by the alien artifacts, is also applied to her abilities, and there is a lot in common between the two. When she makes eye contact with someone, Margaret seems to immediately and intuitively come to know them, their memories, feelings, etc. We don’t see her control their bodies or their impulses, as Scanlon does with the artifact, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t theoretically do it.

Hugo says at one point that the aliens gave Margaret the power to fully understand humanity — supposedly a necessary part of their plan because, well, reasons. Daniel, on the other hand, is given a full comprehension of mathematics, which is mainly used in the movie to translate the alien language. And this is where some of the plotting of “Disclosure Day” begins to unravel.

Hugo is emphatic that both Daniel and Margaret are essential to the plan, but at the beginning of the movie, Daniel has the artifact, the full extraterrestrial archive, and the ability to translate the alien language. Margaret’s powers are deeply useful throughout the film, but their “necessity” to the grand plan is almost entirely based in her role as a news anchor — something completely detached from her childhood abduction. Her abilities aren’t even used in the final broadcast, other than to power the station. In short, it’s messy.

Daniel is given the ability to understand the universe’s most complex math at a glance. This is not relevant for technological advancement, solving scientific dilemmas, or other big-picture applications (at least not in the movie). Rather, it is so that he can understand the aliens’ language, which is … math.

It’s math. The aliens speak with math. Presumably, what that means in practice is that their pattern of clicks and hums is tied to some sort of universal algorithm that Daniel can crack, or it just means that he can understand any language based on pattern recognition. Except he can’t, as that’s part of Margaret’s powers. It’s very confusing.

Spielberg is no stranger to the concept of aliens communicating in asymmetrical ways to humans. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” his only screenwriting credit, famously includes that iconic closing sequence of humans communicating to a UFO with computers and music. But in “Disclosure Day,” the weird language gimmick feels more, well, gimmicky. Why can’t the aliens use morse code with their clicks? If they can dive into humans’ minds, why do they need a specific translator?

The best we can figure is that the alien language itself must have some unique, inherent properties that makes it a valuable tool to convey via a specific person who understands it. Or that there is a much longer math plan. But again, neither of those things are in the actual script.

One of the big emotional set-pieces in “Disclosure Day” occurs after Daniel is finally captured by Wardex, and Margaret breaks into the old Air Force base where they’re keeping him to bust him out. She talks her way past the guards by diving on them and learning their names and security codes, and then, after she gets into the trailer where Daniel is being interrogated, she disorients Scanlon and his men by appearing as people they care about.

It’s a compelling scene at first, but it gets a bit harder to swallow once they get back in Margaret’s car and drive off. Detached from the spell, Scanlon could call the gate to have them locked in, or tell everyone on the base not to look her in the eyes, as he does later. They could send a drone or a helicopter to tail them, stop them, or shoot them. But instead, they all just let Daniel and Margaret drive away, with only one disgruntled henchman in pursuit to take them out.

The only way to explain this, given that Scanlon continues chasing them right after this sequence is over, is that the psychic effect of Margaret’s powers is so immense that it leaves the target stunned for an extended time afterward. We see something similar happen during the climax at the KCXE TV station, where people just obey her without really understanding why. Still, it seems like Wardex could have sent some more guys. She’s driving an Alfa Romeo for crying out loud! Steven Spielberg may have directed some of the most rewatchable sci-fi movies ever made, but this particular scene is unlikely to make any more sense on repeat viewings.

As the title event of “Disclosure Day” is happening, and KCXE sends the alien video archive around the world, the broadcast gets a special live guest — an actual alien, seemingly very old, who speaks to the world through Daniel and Margaret. But it’s unclear in the moment where the alien comes from. Who are the men who escort the creature? Are they Wardex employees? Did Scanlon, in his change of heart, call for them to bring a living specimen? If so, how did they get the alien all the way from the East Coast to Kansas City in just a few minutes?

The more logical explanation is that Hugo has had the alien the whole time, somewhere separate from the “staging area” where he rebuilds Margaret’s childhood home. But it’s never mentioned, either by him or by members of Wardex when they are listing the things Hugo took from their facility. Scanlon is frantic to recover the archive and the device, and you’d think that if an alien had also been kidnapped from his lab, he’d want to find that escapee most of all. So maybe this alien was never imprisoned and is just one Hugo found naturally, keeping it secret since? That’s a lot of fan fiction, but it’s also the only way the alien’s sudden arrival makes any sense.

The very first time we see Hugo, at the beginning of “Disclosure Day,” his people are already constructing the facsimile of Margaret’s childhood home. Then, in a later scene, the clip of her speaking alien on TV goes viral, and Hugo reacts exuberantly, having finally found the person he’s been looking for. The implication is clear that Hugo did not know who Margaret was before the clip, and that’s backed up by the fact that he never tries to contact her before she goes viral. So then … whose house is he building?

When Margaret finally arrives at the staging area, she is overwhelmed by the accuracy. Even the details within her room are the same, if we are to take her reaction as any indication. So how in the world would this have been possible if Hugo didn’t know what person he was looking for?

The reactions to “Disclosure Day” have been overwhelmingly positive, and some of its most confusing moments can be explained away with a bit of sleuthing and stretching of the imagination. But this one feels pretty inexcusable. The only justification we can come up with is that Hugo was working with the aliens directly to create the exact disclosure event we see, and that they helped guide things like the house construction. But then, if he can communicate with the aliens, why is Daniel so important? And why not contact Margaret sooner? Frankly, it makes no sense.

At long last, we arrive at the big question: Why Daniel and Margaret? Why wake them up to their powers 15 years apart from each other? And why give them these powers in the first place?

To get an answer, we have to work backward. Daniel takes the archive and one of the alien devices from Wardex, and he only gets hired to work there because he is so good at math. So maybe the aliens wanted a man on the inside and prepped him ahead of time by waking him up to his powers, so that he could get the job. Except that’s a lot of predictive thinking to actually play out, and the aliens already have a man on the inside in Hugo. Margaret being “awoken” on the same day Daniel escapes with the archive is too coincidental to be an actual coincidence, so it stands to reason that the aliens are working in tandem with Hugo, either directly or, more likely, indirectly (as he doesn’t know about Margaret ahead of time) to create the disclosure event.

But then, why the local news station? If Hugo didn’t know the other experiencer he was looking for was a local meteorologist, what was the plan for dispersing the information? Hugo believes that the aliens are here to spread enlightenment and empathy to the human race, despite Earth tormenting them for the better part of a century. He also seems to believe that Daniel and Margaret were destined to disclose the truth. But we never hear what the alien at the end has to say, so that’s still just guesswork.

These confusing moments and plot holes stop “Disclosure Day” from being one of Steven Spielberg’s best movies, but given the general sentiment so far, it also isn’t one of his worst.