Rachel Keller

Rachel is working at a Seattle paper when her sister Ruth asks her to look into the death of her daughter Katie. Katie and three friends died at the same hour, in strange accidents. Rachel follows the trail to Shelter Mountain Inn, finds a tape and watches it. The phone rings: seven days. She calls Noah, her ex-husband and a video analyst, and makes him a copy. Aidan, her eight-year-old son, watches too. Rachel travels to Moesko Island, learns the Morgans' story and finds the well where Samara was left.

After Samara's burial, Aidan warns his mother that helping her was a mistake. Rachel gets it too late: Noah's week is up, and Samara climbs out of the TV to kill him. She only survived because she made a copy. Rachel helps Aidan copy the tape and says nothing when he asks what happens to whoever watches it. It is the choice that follows her into the next film.

Rachel and Aidan move to Astoria, and she works at the Daily Astorian, under editor Max. The town does not free them from Samara. When Aidan falls ill and a psychiatrist suspects abuse, Rachel is cornered. She goes back to Moesko, finds Evelyn, Samara's birth mother, and hears: "listen to your baby". Rachel risks her son in a bath to drive Samara out, and is dragged into the TV. She climbs the well from the inside, shuts the lid with Samara underneath and returns to the real world.

The equivalent character in the Ring novel is Kazuyuki Asakawa, a Tokyo reporter who also watches the tape and must crack the secret in seven days. Rachel is a creation of the film, as is Moesko Island. The structure is the same: a journalist, a friend and a race against the deadline. The books are by Koji Suzuki.