DISCLOSURE DAY

Steven Spielberg has made one of his most exciting, accomplished movies in years — a gripping, heart-racing chase thriller full of his trademark sense of visual wonder. If you love his sci-fi instincts and can handle a hard PG-13, this is genuinely worth your time.

But it's not a family outing. The language is rough for the rating — obscenities, an "s" word and "h" words, one "f" word, and a GD profanity mixed with nearly twenty lighter exclamations. The action is intense and sustained, including a harrowing scene where a car is forced toward an oncoming train, plus a disturbing hypnosis sequence where a woman is nearly made to stab her boyfriend. The film's spiritual content is mixed too — some real, respectful nods to Christian faith sit alongside Romantic and humanist detours and aliens who bestow near-godlike powers on a human being.

If you're an adult who wants smart, well-crafted science fiction and can weigh its worldview with discernment, take the ride. If you're picking for kids or young teens, this isn't the one.

TV weather anchor Margaret Fairchild suddenly speaks in a foreign language on live television, then in strange clicking sounds — then faints. When she wakes, she's gripped by an inexplicable compulsion to find a young math scientist, Dr. Daniel Kellner, who has stolen top-secret government footage proving aliens are real. Government agents want that footage back, and they're closing in fast. Margaret's path and Daniel's are about to collide — and that's where we'll stop.

Four stars means this is Spielberg near the top of his form, and the source material backs that up: a "gripping, heart-racing, well-acted chase thriller" carried by his "trademark, heartfelt visual displays of science fiction signs and wonders." The thrills and suspense are said to be sustained across the runtime, with the chase mechanics — cars, trains, agents, hiding places — doing real work to keep tension high.

The review doesn't dwell on flaws in craft; its reservations are almost entirely about content and worldview rather than filmmaking. Taken at face value, this is Spielberg delivering spectacle and suspense at a high level.

There's real Christian content here, and it's worth naming plainly. A Mother Superior tells Daniel's girlfriend, Jane — a former novitiate who still wears a cross — that even confirmed alien visitation wouldn't change the Church's teaching about God or salvation. That's a rare, clear-eyed line for a studio blockbuster to include, and it deserves credit.

But the film surrounds that clarity with a mixed pagan worldview. It plainly treats UFOs and alien visitation as real. It leans Romantic in places, prizing feeling over reason, even while also honoring Daniel's mathematical mind and asserting that the universe runs on mathematical law — a claim that, rightly understood, points back to a Creator rather than away from Him. One line reduces human empathy to a learned evolutionary trait rather than a reflection of the image of God, which the film doesn't examine further. Most strikingly, alien technology appears to grant Margaret near-omniscient powers — knowledge and insight that start to resemble attributes that belong to God alone.

The film's own answer to "why are they here" boils down to a single translated message: don't be afraid. It's a real ache the film touches but can't fully resolve. Scripture answers that ache directly: "Fear not, for I am with you" (Isaiah 41:10) — not from a silent visitor, but from a God who has spoken.

Spielberg has delivered a genuinely thrilling piece of filmmaking — one of his most accomplished in years — wrapped around a worldview that's honestly mixed: real moments of Christian clarity sitting alongside language, violence, and spiritual confusion that aren't for kids. So here's our answer, the same one we opened with: worth the trip — adults only. Looking for something to watch as a family instead? Start with our latest.