Nick Jonas goes deep into the bro psyche in ‘Goat’

Nick Jonas is currently on a joint tour with Demi Lovato — and by all accounts, it’s quite a duet.

But he also made a just-as-auspicious L.A. debut of sorts over the weekend at the Sundance Next Fest at the Ace Hotel.

“Goat,” a new feature from director Andrew Neel (out in theaters and on-demand Sept. 23), is a nerve-wracking, often beautiful frat-hazing thriller that stares down the most loathsome elements of toxic masculinity. It’s one of the most upsetting, visceral dramas of the year. And casting Jonas as a frat guy torn between his big-man-on-campus status and his affectionate-yet-stunted concern as an older brother was anything but a stunt.

The movie is full of great performances — Ben Schnetzer as a gentle frat aspirant wounded by PSTD from a robbery, and James Franco in a scene-stealing cameo as a long-graduated knucklehead who can’t let campus life go. But Jonas’ lack of dramatic experience (outside the Jonas Brothers oeuvre) and blunted, distant expressions are actually pitch perfect for the part.

He’s playing a guy who has one foot firmly in a culture incapable of processing any emotion beyond abusive alcoholism and a kind of rancid, arrogant camaraderie. But his presence, forged in the Disney pop machines, also has a natural sweetness and genuineness that implies he’s truly torn up by his loyalties. He just doesn’t know what to do with any of them, and “Goat” is all the more tragic for it.

By the end the film, he has finally seen through the frat facade and recovered a bit of his humanity, and actually delivers the most wise and earned line of the movie: “None of this matters” would be a wonderful thing to post above the entrance of every frat house in America.

Jonas isn’t the breakout star of the movie, and some film fans may suspect a little “Spring Breakers”-style winking in the casting. But it was a stroke of sly brilliance to put him in this role, and he handled the job perfectly.

Speaking of unnerving debut, the fest also saw Flying Lotus’ directorial debut with the short “Royal.” Lotus passed out branded barf bags before the film, perhaps for good reason. It was indeed a stomach-churning sort-of love story, but a clear indication that his visual talent and feel for the mechanics of beauty and ugliness are very real, and someone should give him what he needs to finish his feature.

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