Nelson Wright, a medical student, walks onto a beach one day and proclaims “today is a good day to die”. He later convinces four of his medical school classmates—Joe Hurley, David Labraccio, Randy Steckle, and Rachel Manus—to help him discover what lies beyond death. Nelson flatlines for one minute before his classmates resuscitate him. While "dead", he experiences a sort of afterlife. He sees a vision of a boy he bullied as a child, Billy Mahoney. He merely tells his friends that he cannot describe what he saw, but something is there. The others follow Nelson's daring feat.
A medical student, Courtney, is obsessed with the idea of the afterlife, wanting to find out what happens after death. She invites fellow students Jamie and Sophia to join her in an experiment, in an unused hospital room: using defibrillation to stop her heart for sixty seconds whilst recording her brain, and then reviving her. She assures them they would not be held responsible for any accidents. Sophia is against this, but Jamie does it anyway. After sixty seconds, they panic as they are unable to revive her, but eventually manage to with the help of fellow student Ray . Later, Marlo, a rival of Ray, arrives and learns of the experiment.