The Handmaid’s Tale‘s First Full Trailer Is Here, and It’s Chilling

Anyone who has read Margaret Atwood’s 1985 award-winning novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, knows how downright terrifying the fictional scenario is: The former United States has become a dystopian society, one where women are slaves to the ruling totalitarian male regime and forced to bear their children. But seeing it come to life—in the first full-length trailer for the upcoming Hulu limited series based on the novel—is even more chilling than we imagined.

Hulu describes the forthcoming series, which premieres April 26, as “the story of life in the dystopia of Gilead”—a life that is plagued by environmental disasters, a plunging birthrate, and a fundamentalist regime that is desperately attempting to repopulate the devastated world by enslaving the few remaining fertile women (and erasing their rights in the process). Elisabeth Moss stars in the series as Offred, one of the women who is forced into sexual servitude as a handmaid in the Commander’s (played by Joseph Fiennes) household. The show will follow Moss on her quest to not only survive in the society “where one wrong word could end her life” but also to find the daughter who was ripped from her hands when she was captured by her oppressors. Gripping? Yes. Frightening? Most certainly.

And as if all that wasn’t scary enough, the full-length trailer hits especially close to home given the current (volatile) political climate—one where women’s rights are being challenged by actions like defunding Planned Parenthood and reinstating the Global Gag Rule. The trailer opens with Moss giving a whole new meaning to the term “stay woke”: “I was asleep before; that’s how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn’t wake up then either. Now I’m awake.” Take a look at the full video below:

The Handmaid’s Tale premieres on Hulu on April 26.

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