Sundance 2016 – Goat

The scariest movie of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival is not part of the midnight category.  Goat is a chilling and horrifying look at fraternity initiation at American colleges.  It is a shocking look  at the mindset of fraternities and what the lengths they go through for “brotherhood”.

After a horrifying assault, 19 year old Brad (Ben Schetzer) enrolls in the same college as his brother Brett (Nick Jonas) and pledges the same fraternity. What occurs during pledge week pushes Brad and Brett’s relationship to the limit and takes a hard look at what it means to be a brother both in life and a fraternity.

I absolutely loved the acting.  Ben Schetzer brings us into the world of Brad and we feel the pain, anger, and sadness he feels through out the movie.  Nick Jonas gives a surprisingly rounded performance.  He starts off as a basic frat bro and transforms into a sympathetic hero of sorts.  Hopefully he gets more roles to flex his dramatic chops.  The rest of the frat brothers were great.  Jake Picking plays the tyrannical Pledge Master Dixon and felt like the bro version of J.K. Simmons’ character from Whiplash (2014).  My favorite performance came from Gus Halper as Chance.  Chance is the best friend of Brett and genuinely cares about Brad.  However, his loyalty to the friendship comes second to his loyalty to the frat.  Halper has a charm and charisma to him that makes you love him and hate him at the same time.

2013’s Spring Breakers was a parental nightmare for spring break.  Goat is the parental nightmare for frat rushing.  Any parent who sees this movie will probably die if their son wanted to be in a frat.  The movie starts out glamorizing the fraternity life.  We see the epic parties, beautiful women, and power that you have when you’re in a fraternity.  But then, when the pledges have to go through “Hell Week” to get into the frat, we are taken on a long, barbaric, shameful journey for these poor souls.  We see them get beaten up, force drink more booze than they should, and embarrassed.  Director Andrew Neel does not shy away from the disgusting brutality.  He shows us the nature of fraternities and the mindset that this is the most important thing in their lives and the privilege of being part of the culture.  It is interesting to watch this go down, especially since I was not in a frat.

Goat is like Lord of the Flies in a frat house.  It’s an intense, chilling, visceral look at the fraternity world and what it really means to be a brother.  It is only day two of Sundance, but Goat is my favorite movie of the festival so far.

MY RATING – 4/4

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