The Ring

Teenage girls Katie and Becca discuss an urban legend about a cursed videotape that causes whoever views it to die a week later. That night, Katie, who viewed it one week ago with her friends, is killed by an unseen force.

At Katie's funeral, her mother Ruth asks her sister Rachel, a Seattle-based journalist, to investigate her daughter's death. Rachel discovers that Katie's friends all died in bizarre accidents at the same time as Katie's death. Rachel visits Shelter Mountain Inn, where Katie and her friends saw the tape. She finds and views the tape; it contains strange and frightening imagery. Immediately after viewing the tape, the room phone rings, and when she answers, the unknown caller whispers, "Seven days". Though initially skeptical, Rachel quickly begins to experience supernatural occurrences linked to the tape.

Rachel recruits the help of her video analyst ex-husband Noah. He views the tape and Rachel makes him a copy. She identifies a woman on the tape: horse breeder Anna Morgan, who killed herself after some of her horses drowned themselves off Moesko Island. Rachel and Noah's 8-year-old son Aidan watches the tape.