Georgekutty is back, haunted, brilliant, and carrying the weight of everything he buried years ago.
- Drishyam 3 released worldwide on May 21, 2026, coinciding with Mohanlal’s 66th birthday.
- The film surpassed Patriot to become the second highest Malayalam pre-seller of all time.
- Director Jeethu Joseph closes the trilogy with emotional depth and psychological precision.
- Georgekutty is now a film producer, and the story he inspired is coming back to haunt him.
Some stories refuse to end. Not because the writers are milking them, but because the characters themselves have unfinished business with the world. Georgekutty is one of those characters. He did what he did. He buried what he buried. He moved his family forward and told himself it was over. And then Drishyam 3 opens, and you realise that a man can outmanoeuvre the police, outsmart the system, and still never truly outrun the past. Released worldwide on May 21, coinciding with Mohanlal’s 66th birthday, Drishyam 3 arrives as the most anticipated Malayalam film of 2026 and it delivers on nearly every promise the franchise has built across thirteen years.
The film picks up from where Drishyam 2 closed. Georgekutty has found a new kind of success. He is now a film producer, and the film he produced was inspired, in a roundabout way, by real events from his own life. It is a clever and slightly unsettling detail. The man who survived by controlling the narrative around him has turned that narrative into entertainment. But attention has a way of coming back around, and the spotlight he has inadvertently stepped into is about to create problems he cannot solve by simply changing the channel. Director Jeethu Joseph, who has lived with this story for over a decade, knows exactly how to build dread from ordinary scenes. Even when nothing dramatic is happening on screen, there is a low hum of unease running underneath everything, and that atmospheric precision is what separates this franchise from every thriller that has tried to imitate it.
Drishyam 3 is a cleverly crafted thriller with many things going in its favour. It serves as a perfect conclusion to Jeethu Joseph’s acclaimed thriller franchise. However, the film suffers from a weak first half and some predictable story beats. The criticism is fair and worth acknowledging. The opening hour requires patience from an audience that arrives already knowing what this story is capable of at full speed. But Joseph is building something, and by the time the second half locks into gear, the structural work of that first hour pays off with the kind of precision plotting that made the original Drishyam a masterpiece. Drishyam 3 successfully brings back the tension, emotional weight, and psychological depth that made the franchise iconic. Mohanlal once again proves why Georgekutty remains one of Indian cinema’s most fascinating characters, while Jeethu Joseph delivers a gripping sequel that balances suspense with emotional realism.
The supporting cast returns in full force. Meena as Rani Georgekutty carries the emotional heart of the film with quiet, devastating precision. Ansiba Hassan and Esther Anil as the daughters bring an added psychological layer to the family dynamic that has deepened significantly across three films. Asha Sharath as Inspector General Geetha Prabhakar returns with her own unresolved history with Georgekutty, and their scenes together crackle with the tension of two people who have been circling each other for years without ever being able to close the distance. Murali Gopy adds a compelling new dimension to the antagonist landscape. Satheesh Kurup’s cinematography and Anil Johnson’s score combine to create an atmosphere that is warm on the surface and deeply unsettling underneath, which is exactly the register this story has always lived in.
Beyond its story, the film’s performance may determine how Malayalam cinema is viewed nationally in the years ahead, which is the kind of weight most films never have to carry. Drishyam 3 carries it well. It is not a perfect film. But it is a deeply satisfying, emotionally resonant conclusion to one of Indian cinema’s most beloved trilogies, and Mohanlal’s performance alone is worth every minute of its 159-minute runtime.
Drishyam 3 is in cinemas now across India and UAE. If you haven’t seen the first two films, watch them first. And if you have, you already know you’re going. Georgekutty’s story deserves to end in a cinema, with the lights down and the volume up!
Director: Jeethu Joseph
Writer: Jeethu Joseph
Starring: Mohanlal, Meena, Ansiba Hassan, Esther Anil, Siddique, Asha Sharath, Murali Gopy
Release Date: May 21, 2026
