Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day was unveiled to members of the film press this week, and early reactions fix on a single detail: Emily Blunt’s performance anchors what critics are already calling a major return for the director ahead of the film’s June 12 release.
Germain Lussier — one of the first reviewers to write after the press screenings — summed up the response in one line: "I loved ‘Disclosure Day.’ A dense roller coaster ride blending chase film, love story, & mystery, all wrapped in sci-fi wonder. It’s Spielberg’s best film in 20 years, filled w/ all the magic that makes his films so special, plus an all-time character/performance by Emily Blunt." That assessment has been echoed in different tones across the handful of initial reactions posted by reporters who saw the movie.
Bill Bria, writing after the same screenings, called the picture "the weirdest movie Spielberg’s ever made (complimentary)," and singled out Blunt as delivering "her most accomplished performance," adding praise for the film’s compositions and score. Those are not cautious compliments: they mark Disclosure Day as a high-profile creative swing for a director whose last film came in 2022.
In the film, Blunt plays a Kansas City TV meteorologist who is suddenly overcome by a mysterious extraterrestrial force while taping a weather segment live on air, a premise that critics say fuels the movie’s blend of chase-film urgency, emotional intimacy and speculative mystery. The early write-ups stress that the storytelling leans on Blunt’s ability to inhabit a character through moments of shock, tenderness and suspense.
For Spielberg, Disclosure Day is both familiar and new: it is his 37th film as director and his first new movie since 2022’s The Fabelmans, and it has been described as the filmmaker’s return to the UFO genre. The project was developed with longtime collaborator David Koepp, the screenwriter who has worked with Spielberg on several of his big-idea pictures. Reviewers point to echoes of Spielberg’s earlier science-fiction work even as they insist Disclosure Day takes unexpected turns.
The critical friction in the early coverage is telling. Reviewers praise the picture as a classic Spielberg spectacle — one that brings back the sense of wonder and cinematic craft associated with his best work — while also calling it unusually strange for the director. That tension is built into the press reactions: a film framed as both a crowd-pleasing genre exercise and an audacious artistic gamble.
Those reactions also give the movie a rare modern boost: critics have not only labeled the film a return to form for Spielberg but have argued that Blunt’s central performance elevates the material. The early consensus ranges from emotional response — one critic admitted to shedding a tear at the end — to superlatives about the score and the movie’s high-wire plotting.
What matters now is simple and immediate: Disclosure Day opens June 12, and the first full public responses will arrive that weekend. If the press screenings are any guide, the conversation will center on whether this is the moment a major star and a storied director turn a summer spectacle into something voters and audiences treat as more than popcorn entertainment. Based on the early reactions, the clear conclusion is that Emily Blunt’s central turn is the film’s defining ingredient — the performance critics call career-best is already the reason many will buy a ticket.
