Six months after the terrifying events surrounding a mysterious videotape, Rachel Keller and her son Aidan relocate to the quiet coastal town of Astoria, Oregon, in an attempt to escape their past horrors. Rachel has taken a job at the local newspaper in hopes of finding some normalcy for herself and her son. Despite their efforts to start anew, their peace is short-lived when a local teenager’s bizarre death brings Rachel’s investigative instincts to the forefront. She discovers that the malevolent curse of the videotape has followed them, and the insidious figure of a girl in the tape, Samara, is far from finished with them.

As Rachel digs deeper into the mystery, Aidan begins to exhibit strange behaviors, raising fears that the influence of Samara is taking a new and more terrifying form. A series of eerie events convinces Rachel that the vengeful spirit is trying to claim Aidan. Desperate to save her son, Rachel seeks the help of Max Rourke, a colleague from the newspaper, but her investigation leads her to a discovery of a dark secret involving Samara’s past. This revelation puts Rachel on a collision course with an entity that defies the boundaries of life and death, forcing her to confront the possibility that the curse might be unbreakable.