In the near future, we have scientific proof that there’s life after death.
It isn’t clear what—or where—that afterlife is. It’s certain, though, that some part of us continues after our bodies die. Thanks to Dr. Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford), what was once religious superstition is now scientific fact; his discovery has changed the way people think about existence. It’s also had an unexpected and darkly logical side effect: People have started killing themselves.
In the two years following Thomas’ discovery, just over four million people have committed suicide. People kill themselves alone. People kill themselves in suicide groups. People get together with their families so they can all kill themselves in their living rooms. And all of them are killing themselves to speed their arrival to the afterlife—killing themselves “just to fucking get there,” as grumpy neurologist Will (Jason Segel) puts it. Wherever “there” is, Will isn’t convinced it’ll be any better. “We’re a bunch of people running around making the same mistakes over and over,” he points out, “and I don’t know why we think it’ll be different somewhere else.”