THE EVIL DEAD

Five Michigan State University students – Ash Williams, his girlfriend Linda, his sister Cheryl, their friend Scott, and Scott's girlfriend Shelly – vacation at a remote cabin in the rural hills of Tennessee. As the group approaches the cabin, they notice the porch swing move on its own, but it stops when Scott grabs the door key. While Cheryl is drawing a picture of an old clock, the clock stops, and she hears a faint voice instructing her to "join us." Her hand becomes possessed, turns pale, and draws a picture of a book with a face on its cover. Although shaken, she does not mention the incident.

When the cellar trapdoor flies open during dinner, Shelly, Linda, and Cheryl stay upstairs as Ash and Scott investigate the cellar. They find the Naturom Demonto, a Sumerian version of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, along with an archaeologist's tape recorder. Scott later plays a tape of incantations that resurrect a demonic entity (The Kandarian Demon). Cheryl yells for Scott to turn off the tape recorder, and a tree branch breaks one of the cabin's windows. Later that evening, an agitated Cheryl heads into the woods to investigate strange noises, and she is attacked and raped by demonically possessed trees. When she escapes and returns to the cabin bruised and anguished, Ash agrees to take her back into town, only to discover that the bridge has been destroyed. They return to the cabin, where Ash learns from the tape that the only possible way to kill the entity is to dismember the possessed host. As Linda and Shelly play Spades, Cheryl correctly calls out the cards without looking at them, turns into a white-eyed monster,, and begins levitating. In a raspy voice, she threatens to kill everyone, stabs Linda in the ankle with a pencil, and throws Ash into a shelf. Scott knocks Cheryl into the cellar and locks her inside.

Everyone fights about what to do. Having become paranoid upon seeing Cheryl's demonic transformation, Shelly goes to her room, but is drawn to look out of her window, where the Kandarian Demon crashes through and attacks her, turning her into a monster too. She attacks Scott before he pushes her into the fireplace, and then stabs her in the back with a Sumerian dagger, apparently killing her. When she reanimates, Scott dismembers her with an axe and then buries her remains. Shaken by the experience, Scott leaves to find a way back to town. He returns shortly after, mortally wounded by the possessed trees, and dies while warning Ash that the trees will not allow their escape. Ash checks on Linda and realizes that she has become possessed. She attacks Ash, who stabs her with the Sumerian dagger. Unwilling to dismember her, he buries her instead. She revives and attacks him, forcing him to decapitate her with a shovel. Her headless body bleeds on his face as it attempts to rape him. He escapes back to the cabin as Linda dies.

Back inside, Ash discovers that Cheryl has escaped the cellar. Cheryl eludes Ash and attempts to choke him. Ash escapes her grasp and then shoots Cheryl in the jaw. As Ash is barricading the door, Scott's dead body reanimates into a monster. Scott attacks Ash and inadvertently knocks the book close to the fireplace. Ash gouges Scott's eyes out and pulls a tree branch from Scott's stomach, causing him to bleed out and fall to the ground. Cheryl breaks through the door and knocks Ash to the floor. As Scott and Cheryl continue to attack Ash on the ground, Ash grabs the book and throws it into the fireplace. While the book burns, the zombies freeze in place and decompose rapidly. Large appendages burst from both corpses, covering Ash in blood. As dawn breaks, Ash stumbles outside. As he walks away from the cabin, the Kandarian Demon races through the forest and attacks him as he screams in terror.

Ash is the sole survivor after battling his possessed friends and the unleashed demonic forces throughout the night.

The film concludes with Ash enduring relentless supernatural attacks, culminating in his survival as the lone witness to the horrors brought on by the Book of the Dead. The ending cements the film’s legacy as a relentless, no-holds-barred horror experience, leaving Ash—and the audience—forever changed by the night’s events.