Goat

This film tells the story of a young man who gets brutally attacked by two strangers. He then goes to college, joins a fraternity house, and gets transformed into a different person.

There has been a lot of films that portrays fraternity houses to be super fun, but finally there is a film that shows that fraternity houses may not be as rosy as it appear. The story focuses on the initiation week, where new recruits are humiliated and even tortured. It is scary to see what happens in the film, even though the tone of the film is not too dark. The level of subhuman behaviour is terrifying, because the abuse is legitimised by "tradition".

"Goat" tells a compelling story of abuse, abused and abuser. It lets people reflect on what is right and what is wrong. Let's hope this film will find more audience.

The awful, normalised rituals of American fraterities are addressed in 'Goat'. I can't say if the brutality we see see here is commonplace; but it's certainly a documented fact that new recruits are basically tortured, encouraged by social pressures to consent, and college authorities turn a blind eye. But 'Goat' is a peculiar film, because it ties in this story with a secondary tale about an unrelated attack on one of its protagonists, and I don't really understand the intention of linking the two stories. The hazing rituals occupy by the bulk of the film, but at the end, no longer seem to be the point. In consequence, the movie is horrific, but oddly unfocused.

Goat starts off similar to such frat boy slapstick comedies as Animal House or the more recent Everybody Wants Some, but nowhere near as funny and entertaining, unless you count a ridiculous overblown cameo from James Franco as man in his mid-thirties who saw the best years of his life as being in the frat, which is why he shows up to say high once in a while. Off the bat the movie did show a tone that said it was going to be something different from the fun and games of Frat life.

And the tone definitely sets up for the dark mood change. The second most famous person in this film, Nick Jonas, has a supporting role as a frat boy who was already semi-questioning the whole thing when his brother pledges during hell week, and it's not sitting well having to watch him going through the sick disturbing things they make them do.

Goat, works to expose the harshness and the dangers of Hazing. It does a great job of giving a pretty no holds barred look at one of college's oldest traditions.

But other than this view of how dark and disturbing the male bonding process can get, the movie has very little in a narrative story.

Goat, acts like a document on something based on true events. You'll get nothing from it, no lesson learned, only the ugly truth on frat hazing.

There is one review that describes GOAT as "Full Metal Jacket meets Animal House," which might be true if this movie were at all a comedy, or even a movie that examines the long-term effects of psychological abuse. There is a lot that Andrew Neel tries to say from the director's chair, but aside from a few interesting moments here and there, it seems like he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

The story follows Brad (Ben Schnetzer), the older brother of an all-around popular college boy (Brett, played by Nick Jonas). The film opens with Brad offering a ride to a set of strangers in the dead of night. He offers only because he believes they are coming from the same party. Right away the suspicions are tingling. A 20-minute ride down a deserted road finally has Brad come to terms with his situation: that he is mugged, beaten, and left for death in the middle of a field on the outskirts of town. His face is scarred, bruised, and his ease with strangers is never the same.

The movie is something I was not expecting, an odyssey into the mind of fear along the lines of a film Harmony Korine might admire. Where I was prepared for an dark yet entertaining film like Whiplash, we delve into the bowels of a film that more closely resembles "Spring Breakers," another hypnotic story with similar themes of the recklessness of millennials.

As the story falls into place, Brad finally decides to start college (we assume he took a year off after high school, since his younger brother is already well into his degree). Even before classes begin, Brad attends a Fall party at Brett's fraternity. The house is run- down, jammed, full of empty plastic cups and vomit in every corner. It's not so much a symbol as a right of passage: to belong to this house is to have a brotherhood that always has your back. James Franco (a producer on the film) has a brief but memorable scene as a former classmate who seems to hang around at the house a couple hours too long. Stuck in the past, he nonetheless shows Brad that this is an institution to which you can belong and be protected.

And so begins the odyssey. "Hell Week," as it's notoriously dubbed, is the hazing process where Brad, his roommate, and others, attempt to win the trust of the fraternity and eventually get "pinned" before the school year is out. The name is aptly given. Pledges are brought down to the basement where they are stripped, tied up, urinated on, and made to drink to the point of nausea. They drink cups of hot sauce. They are slapped. This is only day one.

The comparison to "Full Metal Jacket" would seem appropriate on a surface level, but the film rarely dives into the psyche of Brad, a boy who is torn between fear and commitment to pleasing his brother. Just as he allowed strangers to abuse him in the film's opening, so does he (poetically) allow it to happen again, this time for acceptance. In fact, maybe the abuse comes to represent a window into the connected world. Life is full of people who come and go, but what's the true test of a friendship if you literally go to hell and back.

The abuse, of course, is the highlight of the film, and the vivid scenes of torture are at times a bit overwhelming. We know going in that this is a movie based on actual events (events in which the death of a student was the culmination of the abuse), and as such each new scene comes with a heightened sense of dread: will this turn deadly? The violence is so relentless that I doubted I would even end this film with a positive thing to say about it. Filmmaking and production is one thing, but if you are making a movie about violence solely for the sake of violence, then what is the point?

I found Schnetzer's performance something that was both fragile and determined. While I at times failed to see motivation in certain scenes, his portrayal of Brad is fully-realized and the basic moral compass of the movie. From beginning to end, the story can be simplified to that of a boy who learns to no longer be afraid. It's a small arc, muddled in with a plot of hazing that does very little for the cause of the overall picture. On an intimate level, this was a story I could get behind. Everyone likes a happy ending, don't they?

This film gets 90-percent of the way there. As a story of the relationship between two brothers, during a stressful time in the life of one, it's poignant and wonderful. To a discerning eye Goat's setting in a fraternity will come across, through most of the film, merely as set dressing for the underlying story, rather than an indictment of fraternity life generally. And at that level it works beautifully. Unfortunately, the last twenty minutes of the film flips into an anti-fraternity rant that, while not exactly coming out of nowhere, could have been better left on the cutting room floor. Nonetheless, Goat is a powerful and emotional film that, in this reviewer's mind, is touching, as opposed to disturbing as some have called it.

The character development in Goat, beyond the two brothers, is minimal but the level of vague ambiguity it creates works perfectly in helping focus attention on their relationship.

Nick Jonas' acting chops were a wonderful surprise. Ben Schnetzer and Gus Halper also deliver unrelentingly powerful performances.

James Franco's sudden, albeit brief, appearance, is a little out-of-place and the presence of his character somewhat unrealistic.