The New Age Spiritual Retreat Becomes a Diabolical, Psychedelic Nightmare: Pendulum Trailer

We are on the eve of Halloween, and so we’re talking about horror, even though in this case it’s a horror we won’t see for a few months, since the US release date is set for January 1st and there aren’t yet definite updates here. Yet, because the project seems intriguing, and there’s a brand-new trailer backing it up, here we are.
The film is titled Pendulum, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Phoebe Dynevor, alongside Jacki Weaver, Anna Deavere Smith, Jena Malone, and Norman Reedus, but it is above all the directorial debut of Mark Heyman. The name may not ring a bell, but he is the screenwriter of The Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky (and also of the horror The Boogeyman); Heyman has also produced The Wrestler and The Fountain, and in Pendulum Aronofsky pays the favor.
But what is Pendulum about? Well, Heyman says the film is very personal and is inspired by his family’s traditions (which makes everything even more unsettling) and by real events: we’re in New Mexico, where Patrick and Abigail — a married couple with a trauma to heal and overcome — arrive at a spiritual new-age retreat. Patrick would do anything for his wife, until he starts to have strange suspicions about the leader of this kind of sect they’ve fallen into and he sees Abigail herself enthralled as if she were a victim of some form of enchantment. What is really hidden in that place then? The possibility of healing or a terrifying reality that threatens to consume them both?
The official plot line doesn’t specify, but judging from the images in this trailer, and given that these are New Age retreats, it’s easy to imagine that, beyond something diabolical, the use of psychedelic substances such as peyote or ayahuasca plays a role in the secrets of that place and of Pendulum.