Jeethu Joseph on ‘Drishyam 3,’ the Fear Factor and the Thriller Label

Years before he ever set foot on a film set, Jeethu Joseph heard a story from a friend. It was about two families: a boy, a girl, a relationship that unraveled into a police case. Both families had done something right. Both had done something wrong. And nobody in the room could decide whose side to take.

The question lodged somewhere in Joseph’s mind and stayed there. What would happen if you put an audience in that same position? What would they do when there was no clean side to choose?

That single ethical knot became the seed of “Drishyam,” the 2013 Malayalam thriller starring Mohanlal as Georgekutty – the wily cable operator who buries a crime so thoroughly that it takes the law years to find its footing. The film became a phenomenon. Two sequels, a Hindi, Telugu and Kannada-language remakes, a Tamil remake Joseph directed himself with Kamal Haasan, and adaptations in Chinese, and Sinhala later, the franchise is still expanding. Now Joseph is heading back into Georgekutty’s house for “Drishyam 3” – and this time, the walls are closing in.

“What ‘Three’ is basically concentrated on is Georgekutty’s fear and his tension, from his angle,” Joseph tells Variety. The children have grown up, their thinking has shifted. Georgekutty has aged. And the punishment that “Drishyam 2” left hanging over his head is no longer theoretical.

“He will spend his whole life expecting the police,” Joseph says. “That is his punishment. Will he have peace in life? Whenever he sees anything, he will feel somebody is following him. He is going through life on permanent alert.”

It is a quieter, more psychological menace than the franchise’s fans might anticipate – and Joseph knows it. From the moment “Drishyam” became a cultural event, audiences filed it under thriller, mesmerized by Georgekutty’s labyrinthine common sense. Joseph has never quite agreed with that categorization.

“I actually believe, then and now, that this is a family drama,” he says. “One family trying to protect their daughter, the other family fighting for justice for their son.”

The franchise’s reach – it traveled as far as China, where Joseph attended screenings – has, in his view, vindicated the point. The core of the story, a father holding his family together through desperation, needs no cultural translation. He traces Georgekutty’s magnetism back to the character’s origins: a man who came from nothing and built everything through sheer will.

“He is an orphan, someone who grew up through hard work and built his own family,” Joseph says. “When he sees that family slipping away, he desperately holds on. Because in his life, they are all he has.”

That universality, though, comes wrapped in expectation – a pressure Joseph is candid about. Audiences who loved the franchise’s procedural ingenuity will arrive at “Three” anticipating the next brilliant maneuver. Joseph says he cannot write to that.

“I took an organic approach to the character and the story line,” he says. “I hope it will satisfy them. But there is no formula for cinema.”

He is just as frank about the cost of the franchise’s success. When “Drishyam” and “Memories” – his atmospheric missing-person thriller – landed in the same year, 2013, the industry labeled him a thriller director. The stamp has been difficult to shift. He made “Life of Josutty” directly after “Drishyam,” a tonal departure he knew would land differently. It struggled at the box office. Audiences had arrived expecting a twist.

“‘Memories’ and ‘Drishyam’ are a blessing and a curse,” he says.

He has kept pushing at the edges regardless. His courtroom family drama “Neru,” with Mohanlal, was a significant hit. The comedy “Nunakuzhi” did respectable business. Horror, a musical – these are genres he says he is actively developing. The goal is simple.

“I am basically a storyteller, someone who wants to tell stories,” he says. “If I get a good story line – whether it is a big film or a small film – I want to do it.”

After “Drishyam 3,” two projects are next in line: a Telugu film written by Santhi Mayadevi, the screenwriter of “Neru,” and a project with Prithviraj Sukumaran, both currently in the writing stage.

As for “Drishyam 4” – Joseph hasn’t ruled it out. After a preview of “Two,” Mohanlal asked Joseph whether a third film was possible. Joseph told him that if there were a “Three,” he already had a sense of how it should end – and that, depending on what the third film yields, a fourth remains an open question.

“Let ‘Three’ release,” he says. “Then we’ll see what happens to this family.”