Trailer for Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi drama Disclosure Day draws bouquets and boos
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British actress Emily Blunt in the poster for the Steven Spielberg film Disclosure Day.
PHOTO: UIP
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SINGAPORE – The release of the trailer for Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction drama Disclosure Day on Dec 16 has generated intense responses online.
Most celebrate the legendary American film-maker’s return to the extra-terrestrial genre, after two decades working in dramas (The Fabelmans, 2022), musicals (West Side Story, 2021) and biopics (Lincoln, 2012).
The film, which opens in Singapore on June 11, 2026, stars British actors Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colin Firth, and American actor Colman Domingo. They play characters involved in strange goings-on that occur around the time of first contact with an alien intelligence.
Over his career, through alien-encounter movies such as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) and E.T. The Extra-terrestrial (1982), Spielberg has earned acclaim and commercial success. His most recent foray into the subject of visitors from other worlds was the science-fiction action thriller War Of The Worlds (2005).
X user MadVincent666 says: “This is the kind of trailer that makes you remember why theatres exist.” The user is one of many joyful at the idea of Spielberg using his trademark style of the 1980s and 1990s, as seen in films he directed or produced. These include E.T., the black comedy Gremlins (1984) and horror film Poltergeist (1982), movies that featured a child’s often optimistic point of view, along with emotions like awe and dread.
X user TheFilmNerd singled out the scene in which Blunt, playing a weather forecaster on television, appears to become possessed by aliens and begins speaking in clicks and rumbles.
“The weather report scene is genuinely skin-crawling. Emily Blunt’s vacant stare and those rhythmic clicking sounds are the most eerie thing Spielberg has captured in years,” says the user.
On comment aggregator site Reddit, on subreddits such as r/movies and r/Spielberg, some users expressed happiness at Spielberg returning to a retro version of himself, but others threw jabs at the writer David Koepp and the cinematography.
User mp6521 took aim at Koepp. “On the one hand, he wrote the masterpiece Jurassic Park (1993). On the other hand, he wrote Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025), which is terrible.”
The trailer features scenes of deer and birds acting in an eerie manner, as if their minds are in the grip of an external force.
Potshots were taken at the bad computer-generated imagery (CGI) for the creatures.
User ObiWan-Shinoobi says: “Big payday for that one guy in Hollywood that cranks out awful CGI deer for every movie and TV show.”
