Carol White is an L.A. housewife in the late 1980s who comes down with a debilitating illness. After the doctors she sees can give her no clear diagnosis, she comes to believe that she has frighteningly extreme environmental allergies. A prescient commentary on self-help culture, as a metaphor for the AIDS crisis, as a drama about class and social estrangement, and as a horror film about what cannot be seen.

After abandoning his family seventeen years ago, an elderly farmer, Alfonso, returns home to care for his ailing son. He discovers the landscape once familiar to him has been ravaged by toxic smoke and resembles a wasteland. While reconciling his past, Alfonso must save his family from this life-threatening situation.