Samara Morgan is the central character of The Ring, Rings, and The Ring Two, and is portrayed as the antagonist of the series. Sharing a similar story and characterization to Sadako Yamamura, Samara was pushed down a well by her adoptive mother Anna Morgan and died seven days later, creating a cursed videotape to show the world the misery she suffered from in her life. In the films she is portrayed by Daveigh Chase, Kelly Stables, and Caitlin Mavromates, as a baby.
Character Overview[]
Initially appearing as a vengeful ghost, Samara's appearance is always the same - a young eight-year old, brown-eyed girl with long brown hair that usually covers her face, although it can often turn a dark black. She wears a white, short-sleeved dress and at one point wore black shoes. Samara appears quite pale and rarely talks, she is scaryrbing presence. In her cursed form, Samara is very haunting in appearance, resembling a Japanese Onry spirit, and spirit focused on vengeance. Her hair is now dark and soaking wet, hiding her waterlogged and deformed face which has turned somewhat gray in color and she has sunken, nearly colorless eyes. Her skin has become an unnatural moldy color, although when she climbs out of the television, her skin appears a murky gray. Her white dress becomes tattered and soaked with water, turning it brownish-yellow and grey.
Samara is shown to be an innocent victim seeking some form of attention, particularly after her death and the creation of the video tape, so the world can know of her pain and suffering. She is very otherworldly, hardly talking and being unsocial, and spends hours on end standing around and staring at items of interest without moving. Wanting the world to know of her suffering, Samara designed the tape to be passed on to other people so they learned of her life, and emerges to kill people after seven days, likely under the belief that they did not care to aid her and to emphasise how her life ended, and will approach her victims in a slow and tormenting manner.
Samara is shown to be an innocent victim seeking some form of attention, particularly after her death and the creation of the video tape, so the world can know of her pain and suffering. She is very otherworldly, hardly talking and being unsocial, and spends hours on end standing around and staring at items of interest without moving. Wanting the world to know of her suffering, Samara designed the tape to be passed on to other people so they learned of her life, and emerges to kill people after seven days, likely under the belief that they did not care to aid her and to emphasise how her life ended, and will approach her victims in a slow and tormenting manner.
She is quite reclusive, spending a lot of time alone, although this is not helped when her adoptive father Richard Morgan forces her to live in the Morgan Horse Ranch's barn. As a baby she was nearly drowned by her mother Evelyn, and then neglected by her adoptive parents and then killed by Anna, Samara lacked any proper parental figures and after being freed by Rachel, Samara saw her as her beacon of hope and ultimately decided to make Rachel her new mother, possessing Aidan Keller's body to get close to her. She becomes quite aggressive to anyone else aside from Rachel whilst in Aidan's body, believing she needs no one else aside from a mother, despite being abandoned and killed by her previous two. Samara is shown to be quite needy, repeatedly making attempts to claim Rachel as her mother. Although brutal in her vendetta against the world, it seems that her penultimate goal is to be heard, found, pitied and possibly loved.
Abilities[]
Samara has a number of supernatural abilities, although most do not appear until she becomes a spirit. Her signature ability is Nensha, also known as thoughtography, projected thermography and psychic photography. Samara sees various images in her mind and can project or burn them onto objects like walls or paper. Sometimes they are perfectly burnt onto objects that cannot be damaged so easily. It seems that Samara has no proper control over the images, but can rather aim or focus them. She can project the images into a person's mind, causing them great pain and torment, although it was at first an accident when around the Morgans. Samara later used her nensha powers to drive the ranch's horses to insanity and eventually suicide when she realised that her parents loved the horses more than they loved her.
She most notably created the video tape using images and memories she had experienced. As a zombie, she could use nensha on those who watched the tape to experience flashbacks into her life and even see her in dreams. She can also physically harm people by leaving burn marks on their bodies, but they can vanish over time. The curse of the video tape makes supernatural experiences happen to the victims based on Samara's own experiences.
As a spirit she wanted to kill everyone, Samara gains more abilities. Her spiritual presence seems to terrify animals like horses or deer, causing them to panic or attack the victims of the tape or people related to Samara, although it may be an extention of her nensha ability. How she killed Katie Embry and her friends remains unknown, but she kills victims by scaring them to death by revealing her face. After the seven day deadline, Samara can invade a television set and emerge from the well in the tape's inner world and displays the ability to defy the laws of physics to crawl her way out of the television into the real world, but remains as a flickering, distorted figure like the video tape's quality. In Rings, victim Jake attempts to escape Samara by breaking his television screen but she manages to escape and attempts to attack him by emerging through the screen on his video camera, hinting that she can emerge from other electrical sources.
It has been questioned by fans how did Samara kill Katie's other friends when two of them were driving in a car and the other was on a rooftop and supposedly jumped off, although it is possible she can appear via water or maybe caused some sort of event that caused the group to die. Numerous questions have been asked how she appears if the victim is not anywhere near a television.
Despite displaying a fear of water, Samara has control over it, capable of manipulating it to her desires. She can cause a bathtub of water to empty its supply up onto the ceiling, and displays a tendency to use water to scare a person, usually in the form of growing puddles of water that creep after victims. Samara can turn on televisions and electrical appliances, usually to escape out of them or use them to display her images. She can also use telephones to contact a person after they've watched a video. She even leaves an answer message on Rachel's telephone, directed at Noah.
In The Ring Two, Samara possesses Aidan Keller's body to a degree, capable of subjugating his conscience and taking over, although Aidan appears still in control in dreams. However, Samara has little idea of how to pretend to be Aidan and easily makes it clear that she is in control. She is exorcised from Aidan's body by Rachel Aidan when she submerges in water, causing Samara to flee into a television. When trapped in the well by Rachel Samara displays inhuman movements and "spider-walks" her way up the well walls.
History[]
Samara was born to a woman named Evelyn in 1970. Her father's identity remains unknown, but it is possible she inherited her powers from him. Evelyn went to a hospital run by nuns eight months pregnant. She gave birth to Samara but found that her baby would not cry. Samara apparently told her that a demon was born inside her and the only way to be rid of it was to drown her in a pond outside. Whether or not this was Evelyn's own psyche or Samara's powers telling her to do this remains unknown. A nun spotted Evelyn attempting to drown Samara and led a group of nuns to stop her. Samara was put up for adoption whilst Evelyn was sent to an asylum.
Samara was eventually adopted by Anna and Richard Morgan and taken to live on their horse ranch on Moesko Island. However, as she grew older, Samara's powers began to develop and grow, unintentionally frightening her parents by burning images into their minds. The island's doctor sent them to Eola County Psychiatric Hospital for treatment. Anna was treated for depression and suicidal thoughts, whilst Samara was treated differently, examined and observed for hours on end. She displayed her nensha powers by burning images on transparency materials and film. Doctor Scott interviewed Samara who responded that Richard planned to leave her in the hospital. Doctor Scott eventually died, likely killed by Samara's powers. On the contrary, Richard eventually had Anna and Samara discharged and took them back to the ranch.
To prevent Samara from harming anyone, Richard moved her into the ranch's barn, turning the top floor into her isolated bedroom with a ladder as the only means of access. Left alone, Samara had only a television set for company. She also burnt an image of a tree onto a wall, hidden behind wallpaper. Samara was awoken at night by the ranch horses. Out of anger and jealousy, Samara mentally attacked the horses with her nensha powers. The horses went insane and committed suicide by running towards the ocean, drowning themselves. At least twenty-seven horses died, and the newspapers called it an epidemic. Anna was heavily affected by the deaths and was sent back to the hospital for several days. The ranch was quarantined for five weeks by health experts but they could not find any source of the deaths, unaware of Samara's presence.
Anna was released from the hospital five days later. To escape the chaos, the family visited Shelter Mountain Inn. Anna revealed ulterior motives for going to the mountain. One sunny day, Samara stood before an old stone well admiring a tree on a hilltop when Anna appeared behind her, commenting on how peaceful the place was. She suddenly produced a black plastic garbage bag and suffocated Samara with it and then knocked her out with a rock. Apologizing to Samara, Anna pushed her down into the well. Recovering quickly, Samara awoke to witness Anna sealing her in the well. It is unknown if Richard was aware that Anna planned to kill Samara. After the Morgans returned to the ranch, Anna committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. The horses later seemed to recover, but Richard eventually stopped breeding them.
Samara spent the next seven days trying to escape the well by scaling the walls, only to fail and break off her nails and fingertips in the process. She eventually drowned on the seventh day. However, her spirit lingered on, longing for help and attention. A set of rental cabins were built around the area, Cabin 12 built on top of the well. With a television and a VCR set placed right above the well, Samara managed to transfer her nensha abilities and likely her own spirit into a blank video cassette, creating the curse of the video tape.