Ok so i saw this opening weekend and ive been sitting on this for over a month bc i kept thinking "surely someone else has written about this" and then i read like every review i could find and. Nobody did. So here we are.

I went in expecting a Spielberg alien movie. What i got was a possession film where somebody did find/replace: "demon" -> "extraterrestrial," "apocalypse" -> "disclosure." And if that second one sounds like a stretch - it isnt. "Apocalypse" is Greek, ἀποκάλυψις, apo-kalypsis. It literally means "un-veiling." "Dis-closure." Pulling the cover off. Same word. Same event. The veil tears, the entities come through, and the Book of Revelation calls it the end of days while the film calls it a press conference. Disclosure Day is Apocalypse Day with the scary Greek swapped for something that sounds like a government FAQ.

And the replacement holds for the whole movie. Except the crucifix scene. There the film just... forgets to replace anything. She picks up a cross. He quotes the Gospel. Blood flows from the nail wounds. Nobody calls it an exorcism but thats what it is and the mask slips for about ninety seconds.

The kids. In the abduction flashback - young Margaret and young Daniel, taken, experimented on - theyre literally children. Classic focal person setup. If youve read Roll or Fodor or any poltergeist lit you know the pattern: a kid around whom stuff starts happening, latent abilities they cant control, entities that come at night, adults useless or hostile. Spielberg does this beat for beat and calls it "first contact." The animals show up - cardinal (yes, the church rank) , deer, fox - and lead to a fairy tale house in the woods. The kid is lured. Not rescued. LURED.. Then they grow up and repress it and the movie is the return of the repressed except the repressed is "aliens" and not, yknow, demons. Except structurally it is.

The shapeshifters. The aliens hide their true form so humans dont lose it. The deer aint a deer. The fox aint a fox. Screen memory. A mask. 2 Corinthians 11:14 - "Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light." An entity that cant show you what it really is, shows up as something a child would trust, says hey dont be afraid im a friend. In Christian demonology thats not contact. Thats spiritual deception. And in the finale they wheel out this alien - elderly, under a blanket, in a wheelchair, egg-shaped device opens up - and even THAT feels like another layer. The film never shows the actual true form. It cant. Or wont. Always another mask.

The crucifix scene. This is the one that made me go "wait. WAIT." Jane in the chair. Scanlon in her head via the artifact. She grabs a crucifix - he backs off. Drops it into the blood on the floor - hes right back in. So she squeezes the cross into her palm, gouges it in, blood from the exact spot where the nails go according to the common knowledge. Stigmata. The pain pushes him out momentarily bc pain breaks the connection. But ALSO its a crucifix. The film doesnt make you choose. Both at once.

And Scanlon quotes Jesus. Luke 22:42. Gethsemane. "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me." Then he MAKES Jane say the rest. "Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." The Gospel from the mouth of the thing doing the possessing. The cross as the only thing that works. Blood as the price. Scripture from the demon. Any Catholic in that theater knew what they were watching and i find it genuinely bizarre this isnt in every review.

Wardex. The warehouse scene aint action. Employees get thrown by nothing. A man touches an artifact and is atomized, then reconstituted. People go invisible. Space stops working. Thats not sci-fi set dressing, thats a poltergeist - telekinesis, dematerialization, force with no visible agent. The visual grammar is Hooper's *Poltergeist* dressed up as government tech.

The abbess. Ok. This is where i literally paused the frame.

Sister Maura, abbess of the Monastery of St. Clare of the Dawn. Fictional name but the basis is the Order of Saint Clare. Poor Clares. Cloistered contemplative Franciscans. These arent diocesan sisters who teach 3rd grade and drive a Honda Civic. These are women behind walls, radical poverty, some of the most austere religious in the Church. (The Family Theater Productions blog has a decent breakdown of how the film reinterprets them into a high-tech refuge, fine, thats the fiction, but the BASELINE is an order where personal vanity isnt a small failing. Its a contradiction of the entire vocation.)

And Sister Maura is wearing visible decorative makeup. Mascara. Powder. Lipstick.

I have not found a single review that mentions this. I looked.

Heres what i think it means and this is the part thats been eating me: the makeup is the Church. Not Sister Maura specifically — the Church. The Poor Clares are the extreme case. The order that says NO to the world most completely. And the abbess of that order is wearing the world on her face. And what does she say in the film? "God could have created non-human intelligence." She doesnt deny them. She accommodates. She opens the door. The one institution that should be the bulwark against spiritual deception - the entity that shows up saying "dont be afraid, im a friend" - is already compromised. Already saying well maybe theyre fine, maybe God made them. The lipstick is the tell. The visible sign that the wall between the cloister and the world has dissolved. If the aliens disguise themselves as deer then the Church is disguising itself as the Church. A mask under a mask. And the nuns DO give sanctuary, dont get me wrong, theyre not villains. But the abbess specifically - the one in makeup, the one who accommodates - shes the question the film is asking. Is the Church still the Church. Or is it another thing wearing a friendly face.

Im asking. Im not telling you the answer.

So. Spielberg made a film about entities that pretend to be harmless to get to children. About disguise. About the cross being the only thing that works. About blood as the price. About the Church being either an ally or another mask. About "disclosure" not being liberation but letting something in. And he called it sci-fi. Forty-something years of friendly aliens and someone finally made one where E.T. isnt a friend. E.T. is the thing pretending to be one.