Rachel Keller

In The Ring, Rachel Keller, an investigative journalist, is asked by her sister Ruth to investigate the mysterious circumstances behind her niece Katie's death. She informs Rachel that she found her daughter's distorted corpse in the closet and that her official cause of death was a heart attack, despite Katie being a healthy teenager. Katie's friends tell Rachel about the legend of the cursed videotape and that Becca, Katie's friend, was institutionalized after witnessing Katie's death. She also discovers that Katie's boyfriend and two of her friends all died in bizarre accidents on the same night at 10 PM. Rachel travels to Shelter Mountain Inn and stays at Cabin 12, the same cabin where Katie and her friends watched the cursed videotape. Rachel finds the mysterious tape and watches it, after which the phone rings. Rachel hears a voice utter "seven days". Rachel seeks help from her ex-boyfriend Noah Clay, a video analyst. Later, Rachel discovers that Aidan, her son with Noah, watched the tape just as Noah calls her and tells her that he believes her. Rachel researches the lighthouse from the tape and discovers that it was located in Moesko Island, the home of an ill-fated horse breeder named Anna Morgan, who appeared on the cursed videotape. After investigating, Rachel discovers Anna had an adopted daughter named Samara, who possessed the power to burn disturbing images into the minds of people, animals and objects. Rachel meets Anna's widower Richard, but he makes her leave when she begins to ask questions about Samara.

She then speaks to the island's physician, Dr. Grasnik, who explains that Anna experienced horrible visions and dreams after Samara began burning gruesome images into her mind. Rachel watches the missing medical footage, which was revealed to be Samara explaining her powers to her psychiatrist. As the footage ends, Richard abruptly strikes her in the head and subsequently commits suicide by electrocuting himself in the bathtub. Noah arrives and they discover an image of the same tree found in both Shelter Mountain Inn and the cursed videotape beneath the wallpaper in the attic of a horse barn, where Samara was kept to prevent her from inflicting harm onto others. Returning to Shelter Mountain Inn, they discover a well beneath the floorboards of Cabin 12. Rachel accidentally falls into the well, where she receives a vision revealing that Anna suffocated Samara with a plastic bag and throwing her into the well, where she survived for seven days. Finding Samara's skeletal remains, Rachel discovers that the time she was supposed to be killed by the curse has passed, and she and Noah return home, believing the curse is finally broken. However, Aidan makes her realize the curse is never ending. Samara's malignant spirit emerges from Noah's TV and kills him, with Rachel arriving too late to save him. She realizes that she had been spared after making a copy of the video and passing the copy to Noah. Rachel decides to save Aidan by making a copy of the initial copy she sent to Noah so that he can save himself by showing someone else the tape.[2]

The Ring Two takes place six months after the first film. Rachel and Aidan have moved to Astoria from Seattle. Rachel works at The Daily Astorian for editor Max Rourke. Rachel learns of a local teen's death and begins investigating; from the horrified expression on the boy's face, she deduces that Samara is involved. Sure enough, Samara appears, declaring that she has been looking for her. Rachel obtains the videotape and burns it. Aidan encounters Samara in a nightmare and he starts developing hypothermia and bruises on his arms. At a county fair, Aidan takes photographs of his reflection, where Samara appears. Rachel realizes Aidan may be possessed by Samara. Max allows Rachel and Aidan to stay with him and while attempting to give Aidan a bath, Samara causes the water to recede from the bath, replacing Aidan, grabbing Rachel, who tries to drown Samara.

Max enters, mistakenly believing that she is trying to drown Aidan, and forces her to take her son to the hospital. Samara takes control of Aidan's body and telepathically forces Dr. Temple to commit suicide. Rachel arrives, discovering Aidan waiting for her, but with uncharacteristic affection. Rachel falls asleep, dreaming of Aidan, who tells her that she will have to exorcise Samara. Upon awakening, Rachel drugs Samara with sleeping pills and places her in the bath to temporarily drown Aidan in order to exorcise her. Samara is removed, but appears in the television. Rachel allows herself to be dragged into Samara's monochromatic world. Finding herself in the bottom of the well Samara died in, Rachel discovers the lid is partially open. Rachel escapes the well, sealing Samara inside. Wandering through the woods, she comes to the cliff where Samara's adoptive mother Anna committed suicide. Hearing Aidan's voice, Rachel throws herself off the cliff into the sea, awakening back in the real world, and reunites with Aidan.[3]

Rachel does not appear in the third movie Rings but it's believed that Julia is Rachel Kellers granddaughter and that she is Aidan Keller's daughter.

In Misfit Sisters: Screen Horror as Female Rites of Passage, S. Short discusses the distinctiveness of the character noting that "the woman responsible for investigating the murder mystery at the heart of The Ring is not led by visions or intuition, but by her instincts as a journalist working for the Seattle Correspondent".[9] In Heroes of Film, Comics and American Culture: Essays on Real and Fictional Defenders of Home, Lisa M. DeTora states:

"Rachel's journalistic demeanor gives way to a more desperate and motherly heroism as she tries to save her loved ones while discovering exactly why the Morgans killed Samara. Thus, Rachel is called on to investigate the death of a family member, to pay more attention to her son and his father, and to unearth the horrible tragedy of a murdered child. These missions have the painful effect of extracting heroic compassion from her. To justify this "extraction", Rachel is originally presented as a "bad mother" and an "over-bearing employee". Her first scene clearly depicts this "inappropriate" attunement to motherhood".[10]

Leigh Kolb from IndieWire notes that the "ambiguous ending suggests that Rachel may indeed save her son, but will have to harm another to do so. This idea of motherly self-sacrifice portrays the one way that Rachel–single, working mother–can redeem herself".[11] Sarah Crocker ranked Rachel 13th on her list of 13 Horror Movie Heroines That Kick Butt.[12] Paul Clinton of CNN.com praised Watts' performance, stating that she "is excellent in this leading role, which proves that her stellar performance in Mulholland Drive was not a fluke. She strikes a perfect balance between scepticism and the slow realisation of the truth in regard to the deadly power of the videotape".[13] In a post for AMC, Stacie Ponder states: "One of the things I like about Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) in Gore Verbinski's The Ring is that she wasn't the best mom in the world. She didn't neglect her weirdo kid, Aidan (David Dorfman), but she was concerned first and foremost with her own life and her own career".[14]

Rachel is the protagonist of the fan film RINGwhispers. In this short film, Rachel returns to Moesko Island after discovering that several teenagers have mysteriously disappeared there.[15][16]