When a book comes wrapped in black plastic and barbed wire, it’s probably a sign that its contents aren’t safe to read. Unfortunately, the cast of Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead remake are cursed with more curiosity than sense, and thus, another group of young innocents falls victim to the dreaded Necronomicon – a mythical book of demonic power.

Legend has it that the Necronomicon was penned by a mad Arabian poet named Abdul Alhazred after a decade spent roaming the ruined cities of Babylon and Memphis. Having completed what he called the Al Azif, Alhazred descended further into insanity, before either disappearing or being devoured by an invisible monster, depending on whose account you believe. Thereafter, this unholy manuscript was translated into Greek by scholars in the 10th century, burned in the middle ages, before the last few remaining copies disappeared into dusty libraries, only to be discovered in the modern age by an ill-starred few.

Actually, the Necronomicon has a much shorter history than its true creator HP Lovecraft had his readers believe. Although inspired by real texts, such as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Necronomicon was a product of Lovecraft’s fertile imagination, and mention of it first appeared in the short story The Hound, first published in 1924. The tale told of two grave robbers doomed by their theft of a jade amulet, which they recognised as ” the thing hinted of in the forbidden Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.”

Lovecraft was apparently unhappy with The Hound, but both it and The Nameless City, published in 1921, marked the beginning of the author’s endeavours to set his stories in one coherent universe. This Cthulhu Mythos, as it later became known, suggested that ancient, god-like beings once ruled the Earth, and could return to either destroy us or drive us all insane by anyone foolish enough to reawaken them. The Necronomicon tied directly into this mythos, since it was said to contain a lengthy account of the extra-terrestrial Old Ones, and to merely look upon its pages would be enough to inspire madness.