‘Disclosure Day’ Sure is From the Person Who Made ‘Minority Report’ Twenty-Five Years Ago
L to R: Colman Domingo is Hugo Wakefield, Tommy Martinez is Santiago, Emily Blunt is Margaret Fairchild, and Josh O’Connor is Dr. Daniel Kellner in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.

Of course it’s being touted as Spielberg’s best in twenty years. The guy who made E.T., Jurassic Park, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind has spent the last couple decades veering into BFG and Ready Player One. A grand return to hard sci-fi is no doubt anticipated by audiences excited to see what it’s like to have the rightfully revered filmmaker back on his best beat. There’s no shortage of excitement when a lens flare or a reference to outer space pops up on the silver screen, but for his grand return, Spielberg’s story about government secrets, regular people, and alien invasions feels like a flat trip on the outskirts of different genres mired by unfinished ideas about our world.

Emily Blunt, in what I might deem a career best performance developing a character very out-of-type, is one of two major leads alongside Josh O’Connor who is working really hard to act through his accent. There’s most nothing to connect the vapid but ambitious weather woman to an on-the-run tech genius, but their paths inevitably cross based on some unexplainable universal pull. Daniel (O’Connor) is running from a spooky private contractor tasked by the government with keeping some secret they believe humanity cannot handle. A change of heart leaves him trying to deliver hard drives full of footage to his handler so they can reveal it to the masses. Margaret (Blunt) was a weather woman when she started her day, but after a mysterious visit from a cardinal, she is suddenly able to speak and understand multiple languages, compel people with psychic knowledge, and just knows she has to find Daniel. In the middle is Hugo (Coleman Domingo) trying to support their paths to each other so they can solve something and inform the world of what has been happening on the other side of a dark curtain that even the president hasn’t seen behind.

It’s one part chase movie and one part heady science fiction and manages to spread too far between those things to excel at either. A quiet heady drama about whether the people can or should be ethically given this kind of information is interrupted for oddly shot chase scenes and action sequences that will really remind you you’re not watching Minority Report but something a bit like it. “As good as his other movie” is not a fair or accurate metric but where that movie managed to blend ethics and philosophy into science fiction action, Disclosure Day seems to clunkily ramrod a train sequence into a half-baked idea about ethics and disclosure in an attempt to keep it exciting. Conversations about the ethics are cut off, notions of private companies with government contracts are passing fodder, and the religious subplot to support extra-terrestrial beings is starkly out of place. Sci-fi mumbo jumbo and more interesting expansions on alien powers are left unexplained, and entire world war happens quietly in the background. My best attempt at giving credit to a team as otherwise exceptional as Spielberg and co-writer, David Koepp, is to wonder if it’s about the secrets kept from the masses and how if we were forced to face the visual truth of what actions are doing to harm living things, we might adjust our perspective and actions. Unfortunately, this read puts a lot of faith in the idea that people would immediately trust a leaked alien autopsy.

Disclosure Day is magical because it puts a great back in his wheelhouse and has a wicked actress stretching beyond hers. But its unfortunately confusing morality conversations and flimsy plot devices makes for a bit of a strange slog that’ll make you want to see any other alien come walking out of any other ship.

Disclosure Day hits theaters June 12, 2026.

‘Passenger’ Takes the Haunted House to the Open Road
Lou Llobell as “Maddie” and Jacob Scipio as “Tyler” in Passenger from Paramount Pictures.

It’s easy to throw around a word like “formulaic” (you know I certainly have) but it’s harder to understand the nuance of it. “Formulaic,” doesn’t mean unoriginal, “familiar,” doesn’t mean predictable, and “popcorn,” never means bad. So I wield these words with intention as I describe André Øvredal’s haunted mobile-house story, a formulaic and familiar popcorn fright that is made extra-enjoyable with his firm grasp on crafting creative scares.

For his newest nightmare (known for Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and the terrifying The Autopsy of Jane Doe), Øvredal directed T.W. Burgess and Zachary Donahue’s script about a haunting on the open road. Tyler and Maddie (Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell) are a young couple in love who’ve traded in their mundane jobs and Brooklyn apartment for the “van life.” Gussying up a vintage Mercedes van, they’ve rid themselves of most of their worldly belongings for the nomadic life of camping, driving, and a bevy of americana. Maddie is reluctant about this life without a secure space with four real walls, but she loves Tyler enough to let him live out his fantasy… for as long as she can stand it. But things go south (or whichever way they’re cruising along Route 66) quickly when the duo come across a mysterious car crash and a legend about a passenger and his mark of three slashes. Haunted, their van becomes a punishing place to lay their heads, and they must follow the hobo code to avoid torture at the hands of this demonic presence.

The pair are green in their nomadic lifestyle, and no amount of YouTube video preparation is enough to protect them, they’ll need the sage wisdom of the OG van-lifers as represented by a reluctant but helpful Melissa Leo as Diana. Learning to respect the road as an entity of its own with its own set of rules might be what saves the pair and gets them to a hot shower, food delivery, and brick instead of steel.

So like I said, pretty formulaic. A loving couple with some relationship strife happens upon an invasive entity and requires the wisdom of a sage older woman to try and break the curse. And all of it is an absolute road trip blast.

Øvredal is no slouch when it comes to crafting scares, and the director delivers some exceptional horror sequences here. From the lived-in cold open that’s reminiscent of Cloverfield to a phenomenal long parking lot sequence, he builds so much lasting tension that a jump scare is barely enough to vent out the amount of developed steam. Relocating a home to a moving vehicle allows for new external threats, plays with security cameras, rules about when and when you can’t move, and of course, so many parking spots. If you’ve ever begged for the family to just drive away from the haunted house (as once subverted in Sinister), you’ll be screaming about keys and tires when you resolve that driving away is to remain in their house.

Things like using headlights and projectors as a light source, dash cam footage, and sending the concept to a highway all make the scares fun and unique, even if the ghost design does not. The entity itself is pretty drab, and it’s at its best when it’s off screen doing the impossible. Rules and intentions are a bit difficult to track so the stakes are tricky to muster, and while lots of audience buy-in relies on Scipio’s charm, the pair isn’t the most enveloping with their horror performances. (Then theirs Leo’s thankless role which trades some time with her for a surprise fright).

So is Passenger a boundary breaking terror built on complex themes? Maybe not. It’s a formulaic and familiar popcorn horror movie filled to the brim with crafty scares and isn’t that such a beautiful thing?

Passenger hits theaters May 22, 2026

Review: ‘Hunting Matthew Nichols’ is a Worthy Canadian Found Footage Gem
Dropshock Pictures

I just finished waxing poetic about horror coming from the north and the ingenuity of filmmakers up here. Naturally,  leapt at the chance to consume a found footage gem that seems completely homegrown.

Hunting Matthew Nichols is a broad showing from Markian Tarasiuk who cowrote, directed and stars in this debut. As a warped version of himself, he plays a filmmaker making a documentary with Tara Nichols (Miranda MacDougall) about her brother and his friend who mysteriously went missing decades ago. Matthew Nichols and Jordan Reimer disappeared while making a film in the woods, and after an arduous investigation, their situation remained unresolved. Now, with resources and gusto, Tara, Mark, and Ryan (McDonald also as “himself) are seeking out the truth behind the disappearance and just what is behind those allegations of connections to the occult.

This film employs the Hell House LLC approach to found footage, serving as a mockumentary while splicing in some impossible raw footage. It’s not at all shy about its inspiration being The Blair Witch Project, and there are even clips of the two boys shooting homage and of Tara and Mark setting up in the woods like that ill-fated trio. From the trailer, I was reminded of Horror in the High Dessert and how the blend of filming styles would culminate in a terrifying finale. Hunting Matthew Nichols applies all of this well, using documentary title cards and access for exposition and mood then marking it with terrifying footage and overlays. Shifting from modern HD to fuzzy handheld video adds texture to the appearance, adding a meta-reverence to found footage of old and a quick shorthand to understanding the timeline. Like its inspirations and cohorts, it uses the camera as a light source to best capture its gruesome finale.

Much is saved for the film’s big finish, but that’s in no way a fault. The movie declines cheap tricks and buildup, but it does so at the risk of sending off a bored audience. At a tight ninetyish minutes, there’s not much waiting, but there is more spent on the investigative elements than the scares. At one point, a piece of evidence is consumed by the characters and the audience only gets the sound while watching the characters react. It’s a really clever way to save it’s scares for the finale and employ different sorts of scare tactics to keep the energy alive. Using a trio allows the camera to capture intimate conversations without having to eke out excuses for why they’re being recorded, and allows for Tara to have her moments while the other two reason it. Tarasiuk is adept within this genre and uses what might otherwise be limitations to his advantage.

Of course, there’s also the Canadiana. The movie takes place on Vancouver Island and they use the unforgiving terrain for their story, especially making it possible that the boys were lost to a ravine. Discussing Reimer’s family and the issues Indigenous peoples might have with police adds colour to a story that feels true to its locale.

Hunting Matthew Nichols always seems to call its shots, mentioning its cohorts then emulating their style, and Tarasiuk and his team have no doubt sunk their ball. Their slice of Canadian horror once again shows what a committed filmmaker is capable of, and with strong performances (MacDougall had to work) and crafty camerawork, he’s entered the canon of solid found footage features for horror fans’ delight.

Hunting Matthew Nichols hit theaters April 10, 2026