So far, so good. So when Katie (Amber Tamblyn) tells her aunt Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) about how she came upon this tape, the audience is taken on a horror-suspense ride. It goes further when Katie dies within the prescribed seven days and Rachel's son Aidan (David Dorfman) draws weird pictures which seem to hark back to some eerie incident in the past.

Being a journalist, Rachel decides to get to the bottom of this mystery and this forms the meat of the film. Actually, the screenplay by Ehren Kruger is rather cute which leaves some things unsaid. For dramatic relief, there's the incident in which the child puts the baby-sitter to sleep by telling her a bed-time story.

Rachel decides to visit the cottage where Katie spent the night and saw the videotape. And she sees the same tape, which means she is in a similar predicament. She has only seven days to solve the mystery or she dies. That Rachel enlists the support of her friend Noah (Martin Henderson) is academic. But who is he? And what are his stakes in the mystery?

Director George Verbinski does well to create an amalgam of suspense and horror and the quest of this investigative journalist gives the film an added dimension. In between, he throws in a dream sequence to further snare the viewer into the realm of the unknown.

The story unfurls at an easy pace and among the folks, Rachel comes across is Dr Grasnik, played by Jane Alexander, who is scarcely recognisable as the promising young actress of Kramer vs. Kramer.

But the glitch is when after making a point (and within the realms of plausibility) it goes towards paving the way for its sequel. That's what undoes much of the earlier good work and the film nosedives. When her son Aidan draws those weird pictures, there's a touch of The Sixth Sense but that is a red herring as Aidan is off-screen. There are horses running wild and a couple living on a remote farm and Samara (Daveigh Chase), their child, seems to hold the key to the mystery.