Teenagers Katie and Becca discuss an urban legend about a cursed videotape; whoever watches it dies seven days later. Katie confesses that she watched the tape with her friends the previous week. That night, Katie is killed by an unseen force.
At Katie's funeral, Katie's mother Ruth asks her sister Rachel, a Seattle journalist, to investigate the death. Rachel discovers that Katie's friends were killed in bizarre accidents on the night of her death. She also learns that Becca has been institutionalized after witnessing Katie's death. Rachel goes to Shelter Mountain Inn, the mountain retreat where Katie and her friends watched the tape. She rents the same cabin and watches the tape; it contains strange and disturbing imagery. After the tape ends, she receives a phone call from an unknown caller who whispers "seven days".