Kill Your Darlings

At times pushed to enviable heights by its performances, Kill Your Darlings rather quickly falls back to Earth because it’s hard to know what story it’s telling. In the 1940s, Allen Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) was not yet a controversial poet; he was just a freshman at Columbia. While there, he met William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr. While the first two names on that list will likely jump out at you, Carr (Dane DeHaan) was the central figure bringing these personalities together. He was also, perhaps, Allen Ginsberg’s first real infatuation (at least as presented here). There is an infamous story involving all of these men and the unwanted advances toward Carr by David Kammerer; it’s given short shrift here until the final act, focusing instead on spotty character introductions and their youthful idealism.