Sold to me by @dessayo, I was barely 50 pages in before googling “is social horror a thing?” Yes: Get Out! and Parasite are all recent social horror, taking real social issues and recontextualizing them as terrifying rather than disturbing, to inspire fear over anger or apathy.

Red Pill follows an unnamed narrator with unrealized mental health issues who is excited to take on a writer's residency in Germany, away from his wife and very young daughter. Upon arriving, he instead finds it stifling. Based on utopian ideals, he is subjected to an open concept, hyper-modern workspace, forced interaction with other fellows, and is surveilled to ensure he meets the institute’s objectives. Unable to work, he becomes a recluse in his room and becomes obsessed with a hyper-violent police drama called Blue Lives. After meeting the director by chance, he becomes convinced that the director is trying to “red pill” his viewers, and that the narrator is destined to stop him and counter his nihilistic, misogynist worldview from spreading. 

The reader is taken on a wild ride following the narrator. Sometimes it was unclear if he was experiencing reality or not, but also, as a neutral third party, I saw his own contradictions. While suggested to be a POC, self-identified as progressive, and acting in opposition to the Blue Lives director, the narrator still had many toxic masculine traits that impacted his mental health and relationship with people close to him. For all we know, another man just like him may have bought into the story of Blue Lives, not become fatally obsessed with countering it.  

I can’t speak much of the ending without giving it away. But for a book that ends in the very early morning on the day after the 2016 election, it is not a completely dark ending. The narrator experiences growth, and we are left with just a single starlight of hope in an otherwise exceptionally dark book. But for how things have gone since I finished the book earlier this month, a starlight is perhaps all we need to keep moving forward.