Ring

Journalist Reiko Asakawa investigates the simultaneous mysterious deaths of four teenagers, including her niece Tomoko. Each died of apparent heart failure — face twisted in terror — at the exact same moment. Following rumors, Reiko traces the deaths to a cabin on the Izu Peninsula and finds a single unlabeled videotape.

She watches it. Disconnected, deeply wrong images: a woman combing hair in a mirror, maggots, a well, a man whose face is blurred out. The phone rings the moment it ends. A girl's voice: seven days.

Reiko enlists her ex-husband Ryuji, a psychic and academic, to help her investigate before her time runs out. They trace the tape to Shizuko Yamamura, a woman with documented psychic abilities whose public demonstration ended in a man's death — and who later threw herself into a volcano. Her daughter Sadako, also psychically gifted, disappeared at a press event years later and was never found.

On the island of Oshima, beneath the cabin, Reiko and Ryuji find the well. At the bottom: Sadako's bones. Reiko descends and brings the remains up, believing a proper burial will break the curse. Her seven days expire. Nothing happens. She thinks it's over.

It isn't. Ryuji has also watched the tape. The next morning, Sadako crawls out of his television and kills him. Reiko understands: the curse doesn't want to be solved. It wants to spread. She survived because she made a copy for Ryuji. The only way out is to duplicate the tape and pass it on. She begins making a copy for her son Yoichi, who has already seen the original.