Rachel Keller is a Seattle newspaper reporter investigating the mysterious deaths of her niece Katie, and Katie's three friends (all four deaths happened on the same night at the exact same...

Rachel Keller is a Seattle newspaper reporter investigating the mysterious deaths of her niece Katie, and Katie's three friends (all four deaths happened on the same night at the exact same time). Rachel discovers that their deaths are related to a videotape that causes its viewers' deaths in exactly seven days. Rachel watches the tape, then shows it to her ex-boyfriend, Noah (the father of her son, Aidan). Both Rachel and Noah then begin seeing images from the videotape, such as a long ladder and a glowing ring. After Aidan accidentally watches the video, Rachel and Noah step up their plans to solve the mystery in order to save Aidan. They discover that the woman in the video is Anna Morgan, a horse breeder. Rachel realizes that Anna's mysterious adopted daughter, Samara, is causing the deaths. Rachel and Noah stumble upon a hidden well underneath the motel room where Katie and her friends stayed when they watched the videotape. Rachel falls into the well and has a vision of Anna smothering Samara and tossing Samara into the well – while Samara was still alive. Samara lived for seven days, trapped in the well, until she finally died. Rachel decides that since she's now set Samara's spirit free, everything will be all right. Since Rachel's now lived past the seven days, she assumes the danger is over. However, Aidan tells Rachel that she should never have set Samara free because the young girl never sleeps. As Rachel rushes to warn Noah, Samara steps out of the TV screen and kills Noah. Rachel searches desperately for a way to save her son, and she realizes that the only reason she was spared was because she made a copy of the videotape, and the evil was passed on. Rachel helps Aidan make a copy of the videotape (so he will be spared, as well), and Aidan asks, "What will happen to the person we show the videotape to?" Though later in the second movie it appears that the way to get saved is to show the movie to another person, not make a copy. Rachel made a copy of the tape, and was saved because she showed it to Noah, not because she made an extra tape.