10 Movie Dystopias To Make You Feel Better About The Current Political Hellscape

The Handmaid's Tale was written in 1985 by Margaret Atwood and made into a film in 1990, before finally be adapted for television this year. But despite its 32 year life span, it feels tailor-made for 2017. The general concept is that after a series of environment catastrophes, the vast majority of women are unable to get pregnant, and even fewer are able to successfully carry a child to term.

When a Christian fundamentalist uprising occurs, many human rights are curtailed, but none more so than those that pertain specifically to women. Females who have proven fertile are rounded up and designated as "handmaids," which basically means that they are kept in important households and periodically raped by high-ranking men so that they can bear them children. Which is, you know, generally horrifying.

But what's especially interesting about The Handmaid's Tale is that it tells the story of the first generation of women forced to live under this oppressive regime, so the audience gets a chance to see exactly how society went off the rails. And the scary thing is that it's not so far outside the realm of possibilities that we can comfortably say, "This could never happen to us."