Simple answer to remake/sequal debate

Both films are from Ash's point of view.
Ash (or his family) owns the cabin
Ash is a raving mad psychopath.
Ash lures his friends there and killed and raped his friends and lovers, in his own mind blaming the atrocity on his religious obsession with possessing demons who "make" you do evil things.
For some reason the magnifying class pendant is a trigger to Ash, when he gives it to a girl, he becomes "possessed" and sees them differently, then kills them.
Each time he imagines the bridge is destroyed trapping his, though it is not and each time feels he is controlled by the demon to lure in more "possessed people"
The plea he hears to "Join Us" shows that he sees himself as kindred to the demons.
The second film takes places some time later (he is obviously older), he is repeating the pattern, this time with only one victim.
However he has read of the discovery of the "missing pages" and so lures the discoverers to his cabin, weaving them in to his fantasy and the idea that these too must be destroyed, by claiming to have the actual book of the dead, he brings them in (he probably killed the actual professor too)
In Army of Darkness, Ash has gone completely cuckoo and goes on a killing spree, seeing it in his mind as some kind of holy quest.

This is how I see it anyway.

Atheism is a religion in the same way that celibacy is a sexual position