Mumbai, Oct. 1 -- A thriller is supposed to keep you guessing. Drishyam has done something harder: it has made audiences emotionally invest in the guessing game. That audience pull is now showing up in the advance numbers for Abhishek Pathak's Drishyam The Conclusion, which has sold 1.85 lakh tickets across PVR INOX and Cinepolis for Day 1, with the figure expected to cross the two-lakh mark by the morning. The film is now eyeing around 3.5 lakh advance bookings across national chains by release, with the October 2 holiday adding further momentum.

For a family suspense thriller, that scale of advance is significant because Drishyam has never been sold as a spectacle film. There are no superheroes, elaborate action set-pieces or fantasy w...