Steven Spielberg is a director with ample range. He’s carved a presence in the adventure genre with the Indiana Jones movies, directed iconic creature features like Jaws and Jurassic Park, retold a fairytale as soulful science fiction in Artificial Intelligence and dabbled into the world of video game spectacle with Ready Player One. But even with his expansive filmography, he’s famously most fascinated by one thing. Aliens.
Premiering in June, 2026, Disclosure Day marks Spielberg’s return to the alien theme since 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It follows TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) and cybersecurity analyst Daniel Kellner (Josh O’ Connor) in a scheme to reveal the presence of extraterrestrial life on Earth to the public after decades of government-orchestrated secrecy. The movie’s thematic focus shifts from the rather default ‘what if aliens came to us?’ to ‘how do we tell the world that they’ve always been here?’, centering the dilemma not beyond but within humanity itself.
Spielberg’s modern take on the theme effectively holds up a mirror to contemporary society, reflecting on how humanity of the here and now might respond in that hypothetical reality. At the heart of the narrative is a big tip of the hat to journalism, the story overall being a study of sorts into the power of information. Disclosure Day, like many of Spielberg’s preceding alien movies, veers away from standard thrill territory in favour of a more emotional tone. Rather than the aliens’ technological superiority being machinery-based, it is framed instead in the form of advanced emotional evolution, with mathematics portrayed as a universal language and empathy as a superpower.
Emily Blunt delivers a charismatic performance in her role as Margaret. As the emotional centre, she almost single-handedly carries the entire movie. The interaction between the film’s characters is a little iffy chemistry-wise. They seem to have a lot more chemistry speaking over the phone than when in the same room together. The first half of the movie is a bit of a whirlwind. The way Margaret’s powers are introduced comes off as somewhat abrupt and storybookish. There’s also so much information being held back in the beginning, creating a rather overwhelming sense of mystery. But as we progress into the second half, things start to even out, and the rest of it is a blast.
The choice of design for the aliens is pretty typical. It doesn’t deviate much from what we had in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, though considering the story focuses on pre-existence and not discovery of extraterrestrial life, the unadventurous design isn’t precisely a fault. And while the movie invests more explicitly in emotion than spectacle, it still makes sure to offer a couple of action-packed moments. Most notably, there’s Daniel and Margaret’s escape scene at the train tracks and the exceptionally executed invisible car chase sequence during the climax.
Disclosure Day may not be on its way to becoming a huge pop-culture phenomenon like E.T. was in the 80s (and still is), but it’s nonetheless a masterpiece that will be etched in our memory as a modern-day classic.
