Photographer Ben Shaw marries Jane, and the newlyweds leave New York for Tokyo, where Ben has a big photo job. On the way to their honeymoon in the countryside, Jane is driving at night when a young woman suddenly appears in the road. Jane hits her, and the car crashes into a tree. When they wake up, there is no body anywhere, and the police find no sign that anyone was hit.

In Tokyo, strange things begin. White blurs and streaks of light show up in Ben's photos. Ben starts to suffer from bad shoulder and neck pain, and he walks more and more bent over, though his doctor finds nothing wrong. Ben's assistant, Seiko, takes them to her ex-boyfriend Ritsuo, who runs a magazine about spirit photography. He tells them the blurs are the spirits of the dead, trying to reach the living. When a psychic named Murase tries to tell them something, Ben calls him a fraud and refuses to let anyone translate.

Jane begins to investigate on her own. She follows the light in one photo to an office building, where she comes face to face with the ghost of the girl from the road. She learns the girl's name was Megumi Tanaka. When Jane confronts Ben, he admits he knew Megumi. Years earlier, while Ben was working in Japan, they dated, but he says she became clingy, and he ended it with the help of his friends Adam and Bruno.

Ben and Jane go to Megumi's home in the countryside, where they find her rotting body. She had died by suicide long before, so the girl Jane hit on the road was already a ghost. Soon after, Megumi starts to take her revenge. Adam is alone in his studio when the ghost attacks him in a storm of camera flashes, and he dies after a camera eyepiece is driven into his eye. Bruno throws himself from his apartment window. Megumi then attacks Ben, but she spares him for now.

Ben and Jane return to New York, hoping it is over. But Jane finds a hidden box of photos and a video. They show the truth. Years ago, Ben, Adam, and Bruno drugged Megumi. They staged photos of her to blackmail her, and Adam and Bruno sexually assaulted her. Ben was there and did nothing to stop it. This is what drove Megumi to take her own life. Disgusted, Jane leaves him.

Alone in the apartment, Ben starts taking photos of every corner, trying to find Megumi. He throws his camera away, and it goes off as it falls, taking one last picture. The photo shows Megumi sitting on his shoulders. She has been riding on his back the whole time, and that is why his neck and shoulders hurt so badly. Later, at a hospital, he is found to weigh about 275 pounds, the weight of two people.

In a desperate attempt to get her off him, Ben tries to electrocute himself. He survives, but he is left in a catatonic state and sent to a mental hospital. In the final shot, his reflection in a glass door shows Megumi still clinging to his back. She will never let him go. Her revenge is not to kill him, but to make him carry her forever.