Surrounded by barren trees in a snow-covered wilderness, under a dim, dusky sky, lies Siberia’s Kolyma Highway. This 1200-mile stretch of gravel packed permafrost, within driving distance of the Arctic Circle, is a treacherous path. Drivers face icy surfaces, limited visibility, and temperatures averaging sixty degrees below zero, making fatal car accidents commonplace.

But the highway’s victims are not only motorists. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands were worked to death, their bodies left to be consumed by the frozen elements and buried beneath the permafrost road.

Documentary producer Felix “Teig” Teigland, fascinated by this history, travels to Russia to drive the highway. He envisions a series capturing “Life and Death on the Road of Bones,” with a journey to Akhust, “the coldest place on Earth,” collecting ghost stories and local legends. However, upon reaching Akhust, Teig and his team find an abandoned town, save for a catatonic nine-year-old girl and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be.

Pursued by these otherworldly beasts, Teig’s companions confront uncanny and inexplicable phenomena along the Road of Bones, as if haunted by the ghosts of Stalin’s victims. It is a harrowing journey that will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past.