First Pendulum Teaser Sends Joseph Gordon-Levitt to a New Mexico Retreat From the Black Swan Co-Writer

Vertical will release Pendulum in theaters nationwide on January 1, 2027, and the first teaser is now online.

The film is the feature directorial debut of Mark Heyman, who co-wrote Black Swan for Darren Aronofsky in 2010. He wrote this one by himself. Aronofsky produces alongside Ari Handel and Jacob Jaffke, and the teaser is not shy about any of it. Three credit cards stack up in a row: producer Darren Aronofsky, the writer of Black Swan, and then, over a station wagon crawling down a two-lane road under a field of stars, the producer of Longlegs.

New Year’s Day is an odd place to put a horror movie. The first weekend of January is usually where distributors quietly bury things. January 1 falls on a Friday in 2027, though, which makes this a real opening rather than a holiday orphan.

Pendulum Heads to a New Mexico Retreat

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Phoebe Dynevor play Patrick and Abigail, a married couple who travel to a new-age retreat in New Mexico after a traumatic event. Patrick starts distrusting the retreat’s leader, played by Jacki Weaver, at the exact moment Abigail begins falling under her spell. Anna Deavere Smith, Jena Malone, and Norman Reedus round out the cast. Pendulum is rated R and runs 109 minutes.

The teaser opens in candlelight on a dozen people cross-legged before a low altar, under a voiceover sermon that lands on “there is no such thing as death.” Two shots do the rest. The camera rolls ninety degrees so the room lies on its side while Gordon-Levitt stretches out on a couch, hands folded on his chest, arranged like a body at a viewing. Later a grey-haired woman tips her head back while a gloved hand holds a dropper over her open mouth and lets a red bead fall. The teaser never says what the liquid is, or who she is.

“This movie is deeply personal and inspired by my family lore,” Heyman said in Vertical’s announcement, crediting New Mexico, where he grew up and where the real events took place, with making it “all the more surreal.”

Pendulum opens in theaters nationwide January 1, 2027.