If you were in a fraternity or sorority in college, you’ll most likely agree: being in Greek life offers young adults the positive experience of creating lifelong bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood with their fellow students by way of sharing the same character-building and ethics-shaping experiences.

However, the darker and more dangerous sides of frat and sorority life– involving what happens when pledges and members, still in their latter-formative years and shaping their self-identities by seeking acceptance amongst their peers– are met with the new normal pressures of raucous partying that is so ingrained in Greek life. This can create inadvertent bonding experiences by testing their members by way of stressful, sometimes traumatic events. Experiences that former fraternity-rusher Brad Lands had in real life and documented in a memoir.

In “Goat: A Memoir,” Lands chronicles his own experience of seeking safety in brotherhood by rushing Clemson University’s Kappa Sigma chapter (after transferring when he was brutally jumped and assaulted in an unrelated incident at his previous school). The safety he seeks, however, proves elusive, as Lands and his fellow pledges are pushed to the brink of enduring a first-week hazing that, after a real-life devastation amongst a fellow pledge, forces Brad to confront what he is rushing for.

Lands’ experience has been adapted into the film, “Goat,” opening this Friday. One of the most buzzed-about films at this year’s Sundance film festival for its unrelenting portrayal of youth partying, director Andrew Neel brings this tumultuous tale to the big screen.

After a dream-like slow-motion sequence of screaming shirtless young men in a possessed-pack mentality, we meet Brad (Ben Schnetzer) an incoming freshman who has just been jumped, car-jacked and left for dead. After recovering from injuries and the trauma-related stress, Brad circles to the idea of joining his year-older brother Brett (Nick Jonas) in college with plans of rushing the fictitious Phi Sigma fraternity. And hey–maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to run with the popular crowd and meet beautiful young women and participate in all college has to offer.

As Brad quickly finds out, Phi Sigma, of which Brett is a top brother, is the most exclusive and coolest fraternity, meaning the rushing process is seriously meant to weed out anyone who might not be serious to join (Neel also makes the commentary that the level of hazing has grown year after year and arguably in its more prevalent state in this generation’s college culture). And so, an already trauma-induced Brad attempts to prove his loyalty by enduring inhuman level treatment and hazing, including the consumption of alcohol, drugs, partying, and then the less than glamorous moments–being stripped of clothes, having waste poured on him, being forced to fight, and a backwoods event involving a goat that even former rushers assumed was myth in its fraternity’s history of hazing (it should be repeated that while the events are based on true-life events, the reviewer is not categorically incriminating fraternity and sorority life of these events)

Andrew Neel directs with a fearlessness that makes these scenes feel coiled with the tautest tension and suspense for its audience. While Seth Rogen and Zac Efron portrayed college partying and pranking as a humorous and mostly slapstick event in “Neighbors” and its sequel of this year (“Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising”), “Goat” takes the absolute opposite approach of dramatizing the real-life vulgarity and violence to chilling effect.

Ben Schnetzer (“Snowden”) gives an incredible performance in what is a physically and emotionally demanding role, telling a journey of Brad’s initial introverted reluctance to participate in normal life, through his terrible and torturous treatment at the hands of the very people he is seeking to find brotherhood in which forces him to question whether he wants to call these people family. Nick Jonas lends a little more than star power as the more popular Phi Sigma brother, whose conscience is tested by witnessing his brother’s treatment. James Franco makes a cameo as a former Phi Sig brother, indulging in a night of partying and passing out to unanswered calls from his wife and children asking his whereabouts in one of the movie’s funnier scenes.

“Goat” is bold, shocking, and one of the most electric movies of the year. It’s fearless and  unapologetic in its dramatization and depiction of real-life events, which stands as a warning to young people of the reckless behavior that can influence them during the formative years of their life. While disturbing and unsettling, “Goat” should be essential viewing to remind us one of horrors that can arise by way of the deadly combination of pack mentality and a six-pack of beer (or, more).

‘Goat’ is rated R for disturbing behavior involving hazing, strong sexual content and nudity, pervasive language, violence, alcohol abuse and some drug use. 96 min. In theaters this Friday.