The second season of creator Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story takes place inside of a bleak mental institution called Briarcliff. Patients tend to disappear physically, emotionally, or both once inside this last stop for the criminally insane (and in many instances, criminally unlucky), for in addition to the sadistic ministrations of administrator Sister Jude and the threat of a serial killer known as "Bloody Face", lurks an otherworldly evil that may be the cruelest force of all.

During a post-Civil War Wyoming winter, a stagecoach bearing a bounty hunter (Kurt Russell), his foul-mouthed prize (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an ex-Union officer (Samuel L. Jackson) and a lawman (Walton Goggins) makes it's way towards Red Rock. The worsening snows force them to shelter at a general store occupied by a caretaker (Demian Bichir), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), Red Rock's hangman (Tim Roth), and an aged Confederate general (Bruce Dern). As the blizzard traps them within-possibly with no escape-resentments, greed, and hidden agendas emerge that might destroy them before the elements do, in Quentin Tarantino's moody and stylish sagebrusher.