Five friends travel to an isolated cabin in the woods on vacation, not knowing the horror in store for them. In the cabin they discover the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead, which is in an ancient language and bound in human skin. And there just happens to be a tape recorder belonging to a professor who had been studying the book. So, of course, the kids play back the tape, which unlocks an unspeakable evil. The book has the power to turn people into deadites, which are zombies. Ash (Bruce Campbell) must fight the deadites to survive this vacation of terror, while everyone around him is killed.