While on a romantic weekend getaway, Ashley “Ash” Williams takes his girl friend, Linda, to a secluded mountain cabin, believing it to be abandoned, and gives her a necklace adorned with a small looking-glass pendant. Inside the cabin, he finds a reel-to-reel tape recording by an archeologist named Professor Raymond Knowby describing an ancient tome called the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, also known as the Book of the Dead. Noticing the book on the table, Ash picks it up and flips through its pages as Professor Knowby begins reciting translations on the recording, awakening an evil spirit in the forest. The spirit possesses Linda, and Ash defends himself by decapitating her with a shovel. After reclaiming the looking-glass pendant, another spirit lifts his body and sends him flying backward through the trees. Ash is momentarily possessed, but the demon within him retreats once the sun climbs over the horizon. Although he attempts to leave the area, the spirits chase him back to the cabin. When the sun sets again, Linda’s head reanimates and clamps its teeth around Ash’s hand. Unable to loosen its grip, Ash runs to the tool shed and locks the head in a vice. Suddenly, Linda’s decomposing body bursts in, wielding a chainsaw. Ash wrests the machine from its grasp and slices his former girl friend’s remains into pieces. However, Linda’s bite infects Ash’s right hand, which becomes possessed. Unable to control it, Ash is forced to sever his hand with the chainsaw. Meanwhile, Professor Knowby’s daughter, Annie, returns from an expedition with more pages recovered from the Book of the Dead, and heads back to the cabin to complete her father’s translations. Accompanied by Professor Knowby’s associate, Ed Getley, she discovers that the only bridge to the cabin has been destroyed. They encounter two locals named Bobby Joe and Jake, who show them an alternate route. Startled by their arrival, Ash accidentally shoots Bobby Joe in the arm. Seeing the bloody chainsaw on the floor, Annie assumes Ash killed her parents, and Jake locks him in the fruit cellar. Annie finds her father’s recording and listens to the remainder of the tape, in which Professor Knowby admits to unleashing an evil force that took possession of his wife, Henrietta. Although the professor killed his wife, he was unable to dismember her body, so he buried it in the cellar. Below, Henrietta’s corpse suddenly revives, but Ash escapes from the cellar and locks the demon behind him. Ed is bitten in the scuffle and also becomes possessed, prompting Ash to chop up his body with an ax. Later, Annie and Ash investigate a series of strange noises coming from the bedroom and find the ghost of Annie’s father, who urges them to ward off the spirits by reciting the new passages from the Book of the Dead. When Ash’s disembodied hand appears, Bobby Joe runs screaming into the woods, where the foliage springs to life and drags her away. Meanwhile, Annie examines the Book of the Dead and learns that reciting the new passages will send the demons back to their world through a space-time rift. However, Jake insists they search for Bobby Joe instead, and throws the pages into the cellar. Outside, Ash is once again possessed and knocks Jake unconscious as Annie retreats to the cabin. When Jake revives, Annie accidentally stabs him, mistaking him for the demon. Although she attempts to save him, Henrietta’s corpse bursts from the floor and drags Jake into the cellar. Ash breaks into the house, but the sight of the looking-glass pendant reminds him of Linda and expels the demon from his body. Determined to fight off the spirits once and for all, Ash affixes the chainsaw to the stump of his right arm and descends into the basement to retrieve the pages. As Annie begins to recite the incantation, Henrietta emerges to terrorize her. After Ash shoots Henrietta with a shotgun, Annie reads the final passage, but Ash’s disembodied hand reappears and stabs her in the back. With Annie’s final breaths, a portal opens, sucking the demons, Ash, and Ash’s car into another dimension. When Ash revives, he discovers he has been transported to the Crusades in the year 1300 A.D. A group of knights hail him as the “hero from the sky,” and Ash cries out in agony.