‘Had Anju skipped the nature club’: Drishyam 3 trailer sparks a wave of reactions online

Even before its release, Drishyam 3 has already sparked the kind of audience obsession few franchises manage to sustain over multiple instalments. The trailer for the highly anticipated film dropped recently, offering a tense glimpse into the latest chapter of Georgekutty’s troubled life. But alongside the suspense and speculation, it is the internet’s reactions to the trailer that have become an entertainment of their own.

For many viewers, the lasting joke remains that none of this would have happened had Georgekutty’s daughter Anju skipped that infamous school trip years ago. Referring to the incident that triggered the events of the franchise, one user quipped, ‘None of these issues would have existed had Anju not gone to the nature club.’ Another compared the franchise’s enduring mystery to a detective saga, writing, ‘Drishyam feels like Sherlock Holmes. The mystery still continues.’

There were also plenty of amateur theories making the rounds online. One viewer confidently predicted, ‘I know the twist. The lawyer is going to betray Georgekutty, but he would have already anticipated it.’ Another comment took a darker comic turn, with a user joking from the perspective of Varun, the boy whose disappearance shaped the series: ‘It’s because I died that the makers were able to make a third part.’

Directed and written by Jeethu Joseph, the trailer suggests that the emotional burden Georgekutty has carried for years is finally beginning to crack through the surface. The opening moments feature a lawyer warning the family that almost everyone now knows the truth and that acceptance may be their only option. Georgekutty, once the composed strategist who stayed several steps ahead of the investigation, now appears visibly exhausted by fear and guilt.

A particularly striking moment arrives when someone asks him, ‘Why don’t you tell your family about the acid?’ The question pushes Georgekutty into a rare moment of vulnerability.

‘When they learn what I did, what if they start thinking their father is a criminal? I’m starting to think myself that way, so why wouldn’t they?’ he says.

The trailer gradually builds into a familiar atmosphere of dread as investigators and the media once again begin digging into the case. New evidence appears to reopen scrutiny around Georgekutty and his family, suggesting that the carefully constructed protection he built around them may finally be weakening. The final moments of the trailer show him visibly shaken after discovering something on his phone, hinting at another turning point in the story.

What has helped the Drishyam series endure over the years is its unusual balance of suspense and emotional intimacy. Often regarded as Malayalam cinema’s defining family thriller franchise, the films turned an ordinary cable TV operator into one of the industry’s most fascinating moral enigmas. Georgekutty and his wife Rani no longer feel like distant fictional characters to many viewers. Their choices, lies and survival instincts have continued to fuel debates long after each film’s release.

Backed by Aashirvad Cinemas and produced by Antony Perumbavoor, the third instalment appears determined to revisit the emotional core that made the earlier films resonate so strongly. If the first two entries thrived on tension born out of desperation and familial protection, the latest chapter seems poised to explore what prolonged fear and secrecy can do to a man already pushed beyond his limits. Drishyam 3 is set to hit theatres on May 21.