Entertainment

FATE WORSE THAN DEBT

THERE’S an evil spirit on the loose: It’s got hooves and horns and fur and it’s really messing up the house. It’s . . . Poltergoat!

“Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi’s tongue-in-cheek horror flick “Drag Me to Hell” returns him to where he got started, “Evil Dead”-style. Raimi doesn’t care whether you’re laughing or screaming.

As a young loan officer (the talented Alison Lohman, who gives this material better than it deserves) seeking a promotion at her bank forecloses on a Gypsy crone who curses her to hell, we can’t (SCREECH!) go more than a couple of minutes (SQUAWK!) without a skull-jarring (ROOOOAR!) audio effect. The movie is not without some cheap thrills, but it works on the same principle as a fast-food joint or a hair conditioner. It’s all about volume.

The story, despite all the poring through ancient texts and attempts to dress it up in fancy myths, could play out in five minutes. The banker, dragging her boyfriend (Justin Long) to visit a fortune-and-exposition teller (Dileep Rao), learns that the Gypsy gained full cursing rights when she ripped a button off the girl and gave it back to her. Give away the button, and you’ll pass along the curse to the next victim. (Me, I’d sew the button inside my wallet and ride the subway with the billfold sticking out of my pocket.)

That the film puts off revealing this bit of common sense for no good reason suggests its original title was “Drag Me to the 90-Minute Mark.” The banking drama (“I met with their CFO and presented a formula for restructuring some of their long-tem debt”) turns out to have nothing to do with anything. Nor does a séance, which despite much crashing scenery leaves the situation at status quo. Nor do secondary characters. Nor does the back story (the loan officer used to be fat and live on a farm, but she doesn’t speak goat or anything).

Virtually every scene relies on gross-outs: There’s a firehose-strength nose bleed and an arm down someone’s throat. The Gypsy witch loses her dentures and slobbers on the heroine’s face. Someone vomits a kitten. Someone else gets attacked by an evil handkerchief.

If the Gypsy woman could send a goat-ghost out to ruin people’s lives and generally terrify them, why couldn’t she have used this little trick to blackmail her way to a fortune, or at least enough cash to make her mortgage payments? If the object of her curse is to accomplish the imperative suggested by the title, why doesn’t it do so right away rather than goofing around with harmless scare tactics for an hour?

“Drag Me to Hell” is pure cheese. Goat cheese.

kyle.smith@nypost.com

DRAG ME TO HELL Grossly nonsensical. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated PG-13 (violence, frightening images). At the E-Walk, the 84th Street, the Magic Johnson, others.