What if when you die, the life you left behind is something that you can access like a search engine? The objective truths of your life turned into visual statistics of numbers, images, and sounds? In Michael Goode’s short film The Answers, life-after-death takes on one man’s existence and shrinks it down to accessible, undisputed facts.

“If you had access to a source of unlimited knowledge about your life, what would you ask?”

Goode explains his thought process, “The Answers began as a question: if you had access to a source of unlimited knowledge about your life, what would you ask? Would you start with the big questions like, What does it all mean? Or have you always just wanted to find out who stole your bike in 7th grade?”

The formula is predictable after the first minute of watching as is the conclusion, but it’s how the film gets there that makes this worth watching. The first person monologue coupled with rich visual flashbacks allow the viewer to slowly piece together the things that matter most in his life as well as the drama that is the loss of his one true love.

For all of those anti-romantics out there, don’t let that edge deter you from watching. As the story unfolds, you get to know the character in such an intimate way that you grow to care about his life and what could have been.

Daniel Lissing (Last Resort) as Nathan, delivers a solo performance that is a crowd pleaser. His delivery of the more comedic lines, like how many times he’s masturbated in life, are hard not to find funny. Lissing carries the narrative with ease, especially in the short sequences we see with his on-screen soulmate Paige, played by Rose McIver (iZombie).

The Answers’ resolution is open-ended and quite dark despite the brightness of the film’s overall aesthetic. Leaving you with the impression that heaven is just a shadow of one’s former life and not much else, that notion is strangely sugar coated by the bittersweet visuals we see unfold. Destined to his eternal loneliness, the finality of Goode’s imagined universe of death is striking.