"Listen" is the message of [Steven Spielberg]()'s 2026's alien picture *Disclosure Day*. Why would Spielberg do this specific movie, about this specific subject matter? What should we *listen* to? What is the *Disclosure* of the *Disclosure Day*?

Obviously *Disclosure Day* is a hell of a cool movie. I mean, it is Steven Spielberg we are talking about. He is pretty much incapable of making a bad movie. The direction of this film, is, I shall say, Spielbergian. The actors are acting their asses off. And the visual effects are breathtaking.

In a way this movie is an installment to my favorite franchise. The Grey Alien franchise. I talked about this being one of my favorite franchises when describing [No One Will Save You](/reviews/No_One_Will_Save_You) by [Brian Duffield](), which I coincidentally watched not too long after re-watching Spielberg's own [Close Encounters of The Third Kind](/reviews/Close_Encounters_Of_The_Third_Kind). Here is the fun thing about *Close Encounters*, in a way, *Disclosure Day* is a soft remake of *Close Encounters*.

*Disclosure Day* is kind of like, taking the essence of *Close Encounters*: a Spielberg movie, where aliens are friendly, and the government is shady, and the main characters know something. Matching it against [Minority Report](/reviews/Minority_Report): where you have people on the run, in an action thriller, that references [Michael Bay](), with people that have very interesting superpowers. And then sprinkling some [Schindler's List](/reviews/schindler_s_list_1993_and_how_spielberg_was_perfect_to_tell_this_story) type, holocaust inspired footage of how humans torture aliens, on top.

Let me explain. I believe you get the reference to *Close Encounters*. It is a yet another Spielberg film with aliens. Obviously it would be somewhat *Close Encounters* like. We have 2 leads, one male, one female, both have visions they cannot explain. Things they know that others might not want to believe in. [Richard Dreyfuss]() here is replaced by [Josh O'Connor](). [Melinda Dillon]() is replaced with [Emily Blunt](). They meet. They go through adventures. It ends with a communication with aliens. Or in this case, first a *Disclosure* and then a talk with aliens.

The *Schindler's List* stuff is there as I believe some sort of meta-textual layer. It is *Disclosed* not just that aliens are there, but that the government was basically torturing those aliens for decades. During various moments when the camera lingers over the secret disclose-worthy footage, we see various things that look like they've been taken from historic holocaust footage. Just that the victims are the aliens. Some of it is quite nasty. Like you see alien guts and stuff. I think this stuff alone need some further digging into.

Now, *Minority Report*... So, the previous movie by Spielberg was the 2022 [The Fabelmans](/reviews/how_the_fabelmans_traumatized_me), where Spielberg tells the story of his own childhood. In *The Fabelmans* he shows the very moment when he became obsessed with cinema. It was the action scene from the 1952 [Cecil B. DeMille]() film *The Greatest Show on Earth*, where a train runs over a car. A shot from this sequence could be seen popping on a TV, while one of the characters is flipping though channels in 2005 Spielberg aliens picture [War Of The Worlds](/reviews/spielberg_s__war_of_the_worlds__2005_is_too_epic_to_be_scary). In Spielberg-produced film [Super 8](/reviews/Super_8) [J.J.Abrams]() recreates this scene, making a car collision with a train, be the inciting incident of that movie. Spielberg does a car colliding with a train scene in *Disclosure Day* as well.

In *Minority Report* ( as I speculated upon in my review of Bay's [The Island](/reviews/the_island_2005_is_michael_bay_s_minority_report) ) Spielberg made a deliberate reference to Bay's [Bad Boys](/reviews/bad_boys_1995_is_a_tarantino_picture_gone_bayhem_), by putting a song from that movie on full display for a few seconds. In return Bay started working with Spielberg, but also had used the futuristic car made for *Minority Report* ( Lexus Minority ) in the background of *The Island*. In *Minority Report* Lexus Minority is a RED car. Michael Bay changed the color of Lexus Minority for his movie.

In 2019 Michael Bay released a cool AF action film [6 Underground](/reviews/6_Underground) where for the first 20 or so minutes of the film, the star of the show is a bright green Alfa Romeo Giulia. Guess which car Steven Spielberg crashed into the train... Yes. A fucking RED Alfa Romeo Giulia. 

Steven Spielberg signaling Michael Bay over again aside, this, and the whole pre-cog character of Emily Blunt, makes the identity of *Disclosure Day* very *Minority Report-esque*. Obviously those 3 movies are not the end of the extend of the self-references Spielberg put into it. Take for example the motel, the main characters stayed in for a bit, called "Inn-diana". Lol... ah... anyway...

To dig into what the movie's message is, we need to dig a bit more into what the messages of the 3 movies referenced in are.

*Close Encounters* is about communication. The whole premise of the film hinges on the idea that to communicate with aliens humans might need to use some sort of universal language. In *Close Encounters* it's music. 

Going back to Steven's childhood and his parents ( portrayed in *The Fabelmans* ) we can assume that *Close Encounters* represents Spielberg's mother's side. She was a musician. While in *Disclosure Day* the ultimate language of the universe is math, or algorithms. Which is more of a forte of Spielberg's father, who was a computer engineer.

Emily Blunt's character in *Disclosure Day* could be somewhat of a representation of his mother. She is acting kind of like slightly watered down version of what-ever the fuck [Michelle Williams]() did as Spielberg's mother in *The Fabelmans*. Although Emily's character is not a musician. But coincidentally her boyfriend in the film is a musician. And in a big emotional moment, she sings. While Josh O'Connor's character is a literal computer genius that reads binary code as if it was just plain English. Maybe *Disclosure Day* tries to assert that to communicate with aliens you need both Spielberg's mother and father together?

Okay... say the movie is about establishing contact. About "listening". About empathy. Or something. The theme of empathy was given screen-time in parts of the film. And the whole humans being evil bastards that mess up aliens like it's a holocaust, could also be a reflection on that theme. But if the positive theme is empathy, where is the negative one? Where is the corruption of the audience?

I think I know where. To find the corruption of the audience we need to look wider. We need to escape the confounds of Spielberg's own filmography. We need to see what other film-makers did. And how *Disclosure Day* is in conversation with those other films.

And specifically I mean, films like *Signs* by [M. Night Shyamalan](), [Split]() by the same Shyamalan, and Gregg Araki's 2004 alien picture *Mysterious Skin*.

In *Signs* the central tension of the films is religion. This tension in *Disclosure Day* is represented by [Eve Hewson]()'s character. She is a religious person. And she is afraid of letting people know about the existence of Extra Terrestrials for the sole reason that it might make them lose their faith in God. The film even directly pulls iconography from the Shyamalan's picture, showing a forming crop-circle sign, while inter-cutting with Hewson's character's struggle with her own faith.

But what the other two films have to do with all of this? Well, here is the thing. If in Shyamalan's picture aliens are the signs from God, that restored the faith of the main character. In *Disclosure Day* faith itself is a weapon against alien weapons. Which means that Spielberg subverts the message.

And I believe Spielberg with *Disclosure Day* pulls a *Split* onto *Mysterious Skin*. Spoiler alert, in *Mysterious Skin* the alien subplot is not real. The character who suffers visions of being abducted by aliens is revealed to be actually a victim of sexual abuse. And the whole aliens thing is his mind's defense mechanism against the whole reality of the situation.

*Split* also deals with sexual abuse and child-hood trauma in general. But M. Night Shyamalan being M. Night Shyamalan, pulls the greatest corruption in his carrier, arguing with his movie, that trauma itself is a super-power of sorts.

Spielberg with *Disclosure Day* builds this tension to reveal some frighting thing that must have happened to both of our main characters as kids. You are almost afraid a *Mysterious Skin* kind of thing. But Spielberg shows an actual abduction by aliens. Inverting *Mysterious Skin*, while arguing that their powers in the film, come, somewhat, from this alien encounter. Pulling the M. Night Shyamalan's *Split* over the audience. Creating some rather potent corruption.

The movie ends on Emily Blunt's character saying "Listen". I wonder... what is the message of the movie?

**Happy Hacking!!!**