The Dileesh Pothan-led gothic thriller posted back-to-back 65 per cent single-day jumps through its opening weekend even as Ranbir Kapoor's Ramayana continues to dominate Kerala screens.
Bouma opened quietly on November 12 with Rs 45 lakh on day one. It didn't stay quiet for long.
The Malayalam gothic thriller, directed by Rejin S. Babu and starring Dileesh Pothan, jumped 65 per cent on its second day to add Rs 75 lakh, then repeated that exact growth rate on day three to bring in another Rs 1.25 crore. That takes the three-day Kerala cume to around Rs 2.50 crore gross, per Pinkvilla, which pegged the precise figure slightly lower at Rs 2.45 crore in its own breakdown of the daily numbers. Either way, the trajectory is the story here, not the base.
That kind of day-on-day climb usually means one thing in trade terms: word of mouth is doing the heavy lifting. Pinkvilla reported the film has picked up positive buzz among Kerala audiences, which tracks with a horror title that opened modestly and then built. Trade estimates suggest Bouma could close its extended first weekend, stretching into day four, near the Rs 4 crore gross mark.
None of this is happening in a vacuum, though. Kerala right now belongs to Ramayana. The Ranbir Kapoor, Yash and Sai Pallavi mythological has been setting single-day records of its own, including what's being called its biggest Saturday yet on its second weekend, and it's sitting on a 10-day gross north of Rs 39 crore. For a smaller, original horror film to grow at all while that's playing next door counts as a genuine result.
The film itself follows a struggling club singer who inherits Rose Villa, an isolated ancestral bungalow buried in a forest, with plans to sell it and move abroad. The sale plan unravels fast. The house carries a history of deaths nobody talks about and folklore nobody's bothered to explain, and as old childhood memories start resurfacing alongside disturbing visions, she finds herself pulled into a police investigation tied to a string of missing women. What starts out playing as a haunted-house setup is apparently building toward something closer to a crime reveal than a ghost story.
Alongside Pothan, the cast includes Sagar Surya, Vineeth Radhakrishnan, Aditi Balan, Revathy Sharma and Mokksha. Christo Xavier handles the score, and Babu co-wrote the script as well as directing it.
The real test comes over the rest of this week. Day four and the following weekend will show whether Bouma can hold its own growth curve once the Ramayana wave starts to settle, or whether it gets squeezed out once the festive crowd thins.
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