BET kicked off its Friday Night Kickback series with a double feature, and the horror-thriller "The Despaired" wasted zero time getting creepy. If you missed it, here’s the gist: A grieving mail carrier finds a mysterious letter promising to reunite her with her dead husband. Spoiler alert—she takes the bait, and it all goes to hell from there. Literally.

After casting a resurrection spell rooted in Japanese dark magic, her husband returns... but something's off. It’s giving "The Grudge" meets "Hellraiser" meets “girl, run.” Let’s unpack the wildest twists:

Sis got possessed after sleeping with the man she thought was her husband. Turns out, exchanging bodily fluids with a demon opens the door to full-blown spiritual hijacking. Now, whenever the entity needs more souls, she becomes his unwitting hitwoman. We told y’all to stop doing the most for exes.

The so-called husband? Yeah… never came back. The creature pretending to be him was just a malevolent spirit wearing his face. He shapeshifted to manipulate her grief—and body. Hell really got creative with this one.

As if it couldn’t get darker, the truth drops: the husband wasn’t some innocent love lost too soon. He ran a sex-trafficking brothel, assaulted women, and helped force them into back-alley abortions. The reason he died? Karma. And yes, his soul is absolutely roasting on the express train to the hot place.

The protagonist uses ancient Japanese resurrection rituals to summon her husband’s spirit—big mistake. The film draws heavily from Japanese horror tropes (The Ring, Ju-On) while nodding to Western gore fests like Hellraiser. That fusion of eerie calm and blood-soaked chaos? Chef’s kiss.

Here’s another review of “The Despaired” that even the director agreed with:  

Did you watch “The Despaired” last weekend? What did you think? 

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