Disclosure Day (2026)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
A cybersecurity expert becomes a whistleblower after uncovering secrets about aliens, putting him on the run from a corporation. Meanwhile, a meteorologist experiencing strange phenomena joins forces with him to prove there's life beyond our understanding.
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53 films that influenced Disclosure Day
What critics say influenced Disclosure Day
…the hugely influential Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)…
Instead, his latest science-fiction epic finds him reaching for something stranger, knottier, and more elusive. Disclosure Day is not a tidy alien invasion spectacle or a clean return to the emotional clarity of E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The immediate mental leap that fires off is to try and drive home comparisons to Close Encounters, though that instinct detracts from the unique balancing act on display.
It is very much in conversation not only with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but with Lincoln and The Post as well.
Disclosure Day will instantly draw comparisons to Close Encounters of the Third Kind, more than E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial or A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.
…there are times in the film when it taps into the heart of Close Encounters of the Third Kind…
…the new film kept taking me back to the moral and philosophical questions posed by 2002’s brilliant Minority Report.
Then one scene mirrors the sickly green cinematography of Minority Report…
…operates with a pedal-to-the-metal urgency that feels closer to Spielberg’s two Tom Cruise movies, Minority Report and War of the Worlds…
…though frankly not quite as evocative of his particular feel as Spielberg’s own Minority Report…
…the mind reading powers of "Minority Report"…
Basically, it’s like stepping into a scene from Minority Report, and trying to figure out what’s going on.
2005’s War of the Worlds…
While this does feel (on many levels) like Spielberg in conversation with himself (particularly the isolation and paranoia of “War of the Worlds”)…
The film feels trapped in a post-9/11, X-Files, or War of the Worlds era of paranoia.
…channels the sense of paranoia found in War of the Worlds…
With the notable (okay, extremely notable) exception of War of the Worlds, Spielberg has been a radical optimist since Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial…
Like Close Encounters, E.T., and War of the Worlds (2005), as well as other, non-UFO related Spielberg projects, the characters are the story.
It’s been more than 30 years since Jurassic Park was released, and the dinosaurs in that film look way more realistic than the deer in this one.
Do the thrills reach the level of, say, Jurassic Park? No.
…or "Jurassic Park,"…
In terms of grand-scale event movies that imagined new frontiers, Jurassic Park might sneak into that core group.
It’s hard not to mythologize the man who made Jaws (1975), who brought Indiana Jones to life, who made dinosaurs walk the earth again, whose films inspire generation after generation.
…screenwriter David Koepp doesn’t gel with Spielberg’s attempt to please Gen Z, even though he does indeed have quite the resume with Jurassic Park (1993), Mission: Impossible (1996) and even Secret Window (2004).
Where else would the autobiographical recountings of The Fabelmans have emerged from, or his musical return to tragic sociopolitical polemic with his West Side Story remake?
Watching this scene, one might be reminded of The Fabelmans and how it depicted young Sammy Fabelman (a stand-in for Spielberg in that semi-autobiographical tale) trying to recreate the massive (and, to him, petrifying) train crash from The Greatest Show on Earth as a way of asserting his power over something that terrified him. (“That’s why he needs to watch them crash,” as his mom put it in that film. “He’s trying to get some kind of control over it.”)
…two achingly personal passion projects like West Side Story (2022) and The Fablemans (2023)…
…something spelled out in The Fabelmans…
Despite the global love for Spielberg, West Side Story was a box office bomb and The Fabelmans didn’t fair much better (traditional wisdom dictates a film must earn three times its production budget to turn a profit).
Disclosure Day is almost as much of a Rosetta Stone for understanding this man’s fascination with what’s out of our reach as his highly auto-biographical 2022 masterpiece The Fabelmanswas for informing his past.
The sequence involving Blunt, O’Connor and their car being pushed into a moving train is terrifying and masterfully put together – having, I think, more than a passing nod to a similar scene in the director’s first movie, Duel (1971).
He upends some old tropes during a climactic confrontation, and we even get a Duel callback.
DISCLOSURE DAY has its share of nail-biting car chases, especially the train collision scene, something Spielberg has wanted to include in one of his films since DUEL (1971), his first studio feature.
Spielberg, the director of chase movies such as "Duel,"…
…he is also to blame for me hearing the Jaws theme any time I am swimming…
…his work on Spielberg's "Jaws,"…
…foundational Spielberg usually means Jaws for terror, Raiders of the Lost Ark for retro-styled adventure and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. for the sheer sense of wonder evoked by a universe that radically expands our world.
It’s hard not to mythologize the man who made Jaws (1975), who brought Indiana Jones to life, who made dinosaurs walk the earth again, whose films inspire generation after generation.
…the Saving Private Ryan and Jaws director is not a stranger to the exhilarating action shot…
I grew up on Steven Spielberg’s films: Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.
Where else would the autobiographical recountings of The Fabelmans have emerged from, or his musical return to tragic sociopolitical polemic with his West Side Story remake?
…two achingly personal passion projects like West Side Story (2022) and The Fablemans (2023)…
Despite the global love for Spielberg, West Side Story was a box office bomb and The Fabelmans didn’t fair much better (traditional wisdom dictates a film must earn three times its production budget to turn a profit).
His recent projects before Disclosure Day speak to this; The Fabelmans being an exploration of his own origins as a filmmaker, and remaking West Side Story was a dream he had for himself.
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘West Side Story‘ directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Rachel Zegler]…
Look at his WAR OF THE WORLDS where the aliens have been underground for centuries just because, or READY PLAYER ONE (pick a moment)nothing feels genuine or if things would happen that way, the Indiana Jones films where things happen for effect, MINORITY REPORT which has plot problems, WEST SIDE STORY where some of his tweaks don't feel as if people, even those in a musical, would do that and others.
The title character of E.T. is just a stranded explorer, and the alien in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull just wanted to get the hell off Earth.
Between Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, War of the Worlds and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg’s visions of how humanity might interact with interstellar visitors have become so beloved it’s fair to say that no artist has impacted the cultural depiction of alien life forms more.
Spielberg receives a story credit, while the screenplay is by frequent collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Crystal Skull).
At his worst, he gave us Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the reviled 2017 Mummy reboot, and Jurassic World: Rebirth.
But hey, this is at least eons better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Mr. Koepp, who previously scripted Mr. Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park,” “The Lost World,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,”…
There is a train sequence in Disclosure Day as tense as anything in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)…
…foundational Spielberg usually means Jaws for terror, Raiders of the Lost Ark for retro-styled adventure and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. for the sheer sense of wonder evoked by a universe that radically expands our world.
I grew up on Steven Spielberg’s films: Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler’s List (1993), and Saving Private Ryan (1998) in particular have all made indelible imprints in the culture…
Gary Rydstrom’s (Saving Private Ryan) sound design…
…the Saving Private Ryan and Jaws director is not a stranger to the exhilarating action shot…
But Disclosure Day’s opening act is arguably closer to Munich, with its lengthy discourses on the philosophical and religious ramifications of a life-changing decision.
Disclosure Day is the most thrilling Spielberg film since Munich.
Harkening back to his first studio feature – the non-stop on the road chase of The Sugarland Express (1974) – and evoking perhaps unintentional notes of last year’s always-roving One Battle After Another, Spielberg crafts a long-haul chase film…
…it’s interesting that his mom, Goldie Hawn, starred in Spielberg’s debut feature, The Sugarland Express, back in 1974.
It’s fun to see this director scattering police cars around the highway as per his The Sugarland Express…
"The Sugarland Express,"…
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)…
Instead, his latest science-fiction epic finds him reaching for something stranger, knottier, and more elusive. Disclosure Day is not a tidy alien invasion spectacle or a clean return to the emotional clarity of E.T. or Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
I personally prefer when such religious resonance is left to be teased out by audiences, as it is in something like Close Encounters and E.T.
His newest film, Disclosure Day, arrives more than four decades after ET, and can oddly be considered its liturgical continuation.
E.T. was inspired partly by research into a notorious alleged alien encounter in Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1955.
…or turn it into something sweet (E.T.)
In The Last Crusade specifically, Indy literally takes a ‘leap of faith,’ and his dad tells him that believing is the key to unlocking God’s powers.
It is very much in conversation not only with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but with Lincoln and The Post as well.
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘The Post‘ directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks]…
Long gone are the days of the journalistic bravado Spielberg once dramatised in The Post.
It is very much in conversation not only with Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but with Lincoln and The Post as well.
…both films were critically acclaimed and vastly better than the $600-million-grossing Ready Player One…
The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Ready Player One(2018) were big adventures made between historical dramas, but both were hamstrung with technological exhibitionism.
Disclosure Day is not only a return to Spielberg’s UFO fixation, but also his first action blockbuster since Ready Player One (2018).
[READ MORE: Our review of ‘Ready Player One‘ directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tye Sheridan]…
Look at his WAR OF THE WORLDS where the aliens have been underground for centuries just because, or READY PLAYER ONE (pick a moment)nothing feels genuine or if things would happen that way, the Indiana Jones films where things happen for effect, MINORITY REPORT which has plot problems, WEST SIDE STORY where some of his tweaks don't feel as if people, even those in a musical, would do that and others.
…save for 2018’s Ready Player One…
…it’s in the sort of way that’s very reminiscent of what happens to humans in Vince Gilligan’s (who, fittingly, did write his fair share of episodes for The X-Files)…
When at its best, it plays like an extended conspiracy episode of “The X-Files”.
Alongside this X-Files-style scenario, Kansas City TV weather presenter Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) begins speaking in a strange, unknown language during a live broadcast.
The film feels trapped in a post-9/11, X-Files, or War of the Worlds era of paranoia.
"The X-Files" may have told us the truth is out there, but "Disclosure Day" asks, "Can we even handle the truth if we knew it?"
Elsewhere, Jane Blakenship (Eve Hewson) is Daniel’s ride-along girlfriend, whose struggle with faith and doubt regarding her partner and lapsed Catholicism in the face of alien gnosis (she’s a former nun) elicits Dana Scully flashbacks.
Much like Arrival, this is an alien film that is ultimately about communication, understanding, and empathy.
Seeing this really makes me appreciate Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival even more. It skillfully pivots from the typical alien story clichés to present a sophisticated, nuanced, deeply emotional, and character-focused narrative.
This latest effort bears a striking resemblance to Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which is not a bad thing at all.
The handful of truly great alien films we’ve witnessed in the last 15 years, notably Arrival, Nope (also Universal!), Under the Skin and Super 8 (which Spielberg produced), only serve to underline how unfortunate this feels.
From Project Hail Mary to Masters of the Universe, recapturing the feel of childhood dreams and specifically that Spielbergian sense of awe in the 80’s has been a big theme in 2026…
You could say it follows James Gunn’s recent Superman or Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Maryin espousing what the chronically online dub as hopecore…
It will likely provoke some divisive reactions and surely won’t be as much of a crowd-pleaser as the other alien blockbuster released this year, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Mary.
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Given Spielberg cribs some imagery directly from Signs…
While the obvious parallel here is Signs, Shyamalan’s wildly popular alien invasion thriller, to me Disclosure Day feels more akin to The Happening.
In The Happening, the world is faced with an unprecedented crisis, ultimately finding strength in love and community. So too do the characters in Disclosure Day; facing WWIII, the revelation that aliens are real and we are not alone in the universe suddenly has the power to change our destructive course.
You could say it follows James Gunn’s recent Superman or Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s Project Hail Maryin espousing what the chronically online dub as hopecore…
…another (no less thrilling) homage to Spielberg’s beloved train wreck sequence from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth…
What’s interesting is that “Disclosure Day” often feels less like an alien movie and more like a 1970s paranoia thriller in the vein of “The Parallax View” or “The Manchurian Candidate.”
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What’s interesting is that “Disclosure Day” often feels less like an alien movie and more like a 1970s paranoia thriller in the vein of “The Parallax View” or “The Manchurian Candidate.”
…until H. R. Giger’s xenomorph-inspiring image came along to change how the “average” extraterrestrial would look in Alien…