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…
…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.
…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.
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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.
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.
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).
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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…
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.