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Review: In ‘Goat,’ Frat Brothers Unleash Their Sadistic Terror

Ben Schnetzer, left, and Nick Jonas in “Goat.”Credit...Film Arcade
Goat
Directed by Andrew Neel
Drama
R
1h 36m

A credible and dispiriting chronicle of late-adolescent male toxicity, “Goat,” adapted from a 2004 memoir by Brad Land, begins with a senseless assault. The quiet, seemingly sensible Brad (Ben Schnetzer) bails on a college party his older brother, Brett (Nick Jonas), has allowed him to attend, and is waylaid by a couple of local lowlifes. Brad nevertheless resolves to go to Brett’s school, and pledge his frat.

Directed by Andrew Neel from a script by David Gordon Green, Mike Roberts and Mr. Neel, the movie is shot in hand-held, quasi-documentary style, although Mr. Neel weirdly forgoes a lot of what would have been useful exposition in the first quarter. The movie is similarly indirect in its approach to the admittedly inarticulate characters’ psychology. But in depicting the atrocities of the frat’s “Hell Week,” it is painstakingly explicit, a junior varsity variant on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s study of fascist sadism, “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom.”

I have limited sympathy for young people who collude in their own degradation in the interest of socialization and “brotherhood,” but the plight of Brad and his gentler roommate, Will (Danny Flaherty), can’t help eliciting shudders. “If the fraternity goes, everything goes with it,” Will observes at one point. Since the movie gives us no other view of campus life but the frat’s (the picture takes place at a fictionalized school), the viewer has no choice but to believe that.

The performances are conscientious and earnest; Mr. Jonas has not much to do but come off as callow, with a streak of kindness, and he does so. James Franco, a producer, contributes a bro-caricature cameo that’s not as funny as he must have thought it was.

“Goat” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for very ugly frat hazing activity, bad language and sex.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 7 of the New York edition. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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