Some time after the events of The Ring, Samara Morgan's videotape has spread, as each person who sees the video makes a copy and shows it to someone else. A subculture has grown surrounding the video: people wait to see how close to the seven-day deadline they can get. When they grow too afraid to go on any longer, they show the tape to the next assigned person. During the interval, some create videos documenting their experiences to be posted to websites devoted to the videotape phenomenon. Groups that have watched the video are called "rings".The movie is focused on Jake, the latest member of one such ring. The ring has also recruited its next member, Timmy, who will watch the tape when Jake cracks. Eddie, a member, says that no one has ever been able to make it to day seven before cracking, and everyone who did has died. He tells Jake to make sure to record everything he sees. Jake is amazed at what he experiences at first, and Vanessa, another member, says she wants Jake to make it to day seven.However, Jake's experiences soon turn scary, as he starts seeing visions of Samara suddenly popping up wherever he goes, and has a similar dream that Rachel had from the first movie of Samara grabbing his arm, leaving a bruise there. After several more unsettling experiences, he cracks on the sixth day, but Timmy refuses to watch the tape. It is revealed that Vanessa is the one who made Timmy refuse to watch the tape, as she wants to see what happens on day seven. However, this leaves Jake without someone to pass the curse onto.By the next day, he's become so desperate he tries to play the video on the display models at an electronics store, but is caught and thrown out by a security guard who is a member of rings, and knows what the tape does. Jake begins dialing random numbers, hoping to find somebody to show the tape. Finally, he thinks of Emily, a girl he goes to school with. He invites her over without mentioning the video. Before she arrives, he experiences a vision in which Samara arrives and he tries to break the TV. Samara comes out anyway since the TV wasn't completely destroyed. She reaches through the screen on his video camera and the vision ends.An hour before the deadline, Emily agrees to come, leading to the opening sequence of The Ring 2. Vanessa is seen encouraging Emily by nodding vigorously when she is making her decision to go to Jake's, so she may have known about the rings beforehand.