Assignments

Chapter 11 – The Business

The Ring

Logline:

If you watch a certain videotape, after seven days you die a gruesome death. A journalist sets out to find the root of the evil, and since she has watched the video herself, she has only seven days.

One paragraph:

After watching a certain videotape, a teenage girl dies a gruesome death for no good reason. Her aunt, Rachel, a journalist sets out to investigate the tape, which is rumored to kill anyone who watches it after seven days. Rachel watches the tape herself, after which the phone rings and a voice says “seven days.” Weird physical manifestations indicate that this is no hoax. And then, Rachel’s young son watches the tape. Fearing she has only seven days to live, Rachel seeks to find the source of the evil, following a trail that leads her to a mysterious island where a chilling little girl lived, then died at the bottom of a well.  

Synopsis:

A rumor circulating among Seattle teenagers: if you watch a certain videotape, you die after seven days. A teenage girl is nervous because she watched the tape. Seven days ago. Static appears on her TV screen. Water seeps onto the floor. The girl dies a gruesome death.

Rachel Keller is a somewhat scatterbrained mother of her young son, Aidan, but a first rate journalist. Because it was her niece who died, she sets out to investigate the rumor. She discovers that three other people watched the videotape with her niece; all died, exact same day and time.

Rachel travels to the Shelter Mountain Inn, where her niece watched the tape. Watching the homemade tape in a cabin, she sees a brief montage of disturbing images in grainy black-and-white. The phone rings. A voice says only, “Seven days.” Rachel takes the tape, suspecting the rumor is true, realizing she is now trying to unlock the mystery to save herself.

Against Rachel’s wishes, Noah (her ex-boyfriend and estranged father of Aidan) watches the tape, declaring the whole thing nonsense. But weird physical manifestations come to Rachel and Noah, convincing Noah the rumor is true. Worse, Aidan watches the tape one night while Rachel sleeps. Now he, too, is marked for death.

Time is running out for Rachel. Researching images on the tape leads her to Moesko Island and a horse breeding couple, the Morgans. The woman, Anna, is now dead and the man, Richard is reluctant to talk. Rachel discovers from the local doctor that the Morgans tried for years to get pregnant to no avail, then they went away and returned with a daughter, Samara, whom they claim was adopted. As soon as Samara appeared, things went bad on the island—rough winters, poor fishing, the mysterious death of the Morgan’s horses. Anna went mad trying to cope with her strange daughter. Samara was sent to a psychiatric institution, but no one knows what has become of her.

In the Morgan house, Rachel sees a tree etching burned into the wall, which Rachel recognizes as the same tree outside the cabin at Shelter Mountain Inn.

On her seventh day, Rachel returns to the cabin. She finds a deep well under the floorboards, and down in the well Rachel sees a vision of what happened—Anna Morgan threw Samara into the well, sealing the top, which created a halo of light, the same as the “ring” image on the videotape. Rachel finds Samara’s ghost and comforts her, after which the ghost dissolves. Rachel realizes the tape is Samara’s way having her murder “heard,” and now she can rest in peace.

But… back home, Aidan, who has psychic tendencies, tells Rachel that Samara will “never stop.” Indeed, Noah dies the next day, his seventh day. Rachel was only spared because she had made a copy of the tape, helping Samara circulate her evil. She forces Aidan to make a copy so he, too, may be spared. Others, though, will continue to watch…and die.