‘A Message From Brianna’ Ending, Explained

Leonard and Kathy are the proud parents to two-year-old Brianna in the BET+ original film A Message From Brianna. The couple, played by former NFL player Vernon Davis and Asia’h Epperson, are living a happy life and have just moved into their new home, which happens to be Leonard’s grandparents’ home, when strange things start happening. First it was just a door being left open, and the dogs barking at something unseen, but things start to get more serious when young Brianna gets involved. The parents have been concerned with Brianna’s development because at two years old, she is still crawling instead of walking, but their doctors claim there’s nothing physically wrong with the girl and she’ll develop in time. As time goes on, we see Brianna get out of her crib at night, creeping around her house and seemingly getting snatched by unseen forces who take her away when her parents aren’t looking, only to return her later.

Things get even more gruesome when one of the family’s two dogs is eaten alive, and the death is blamed on the second dog. Later, an unseen force tries to smother Kathy with a pillow, and that’s when the parents realize Brianna is possessed by a demon — and not only that, but the home seems to have a portal to some kind of hellish underworld in it.

Leonard is pulled into the portal, where he sees the face of a young woman named Crystal whom he recognizes from his childhood as a girl his grandparents cared for when he lived with them as a child, but who mysteriously disappeared. In a flashback, we learn that Leonard’s grandfather, Bernard, was raping Crystal, so when his grandmother found out, she killed her out of jealousy and Bernard buried the body. It’s pretty effing sick! Crystal’s spirit, angry as hell, came back and killed the grandmother, and Bernard, who now has dementia, has lived with the secret for two decades. In the present day, Bernard is arrested, and his belongings are given to Leonard by a police officer who tells Leonard that when they dug up Crystal’s remains, they learned she was pregnant. Among Bernard’s belongings is a photo of Crystal, and when Brianna sees it she say’s “Mama.”

‘A Message From Brianna’ Ending, Explained

So Kathy has a dream where she sees Crystal having sex with Leonard and then acting as Brianna’s mother figure, so she literally tells Leonard that they need to give Brianna away because she can’t live with a demon baby who isn’t even hers to begin with. I guess that’s fair. We see the parents bringing Brianna to a church, ready to leave her there forever, and they leave.

Six months later… Well, THEY DID IT. They literally abandoned their child at a church and went home. We see them washing dishes after dinner like they did not leave their daughter alone on the steps of the church and planning a sex romp for later that night, and as Kathy readies herself for a shower, she takes a pregnancy test that comes out positive. “I can’t believe I’m pregnant again,” she says happily, and then what do you know, she turns around and Brianna is standing in her bathroom. Kathy’s then attacked by the spirit of Crystal, and when Leonard comes to the bedroom he realizes that Kathy has been possessed by Crystal.

The next day, the pastor comes by to check in on Leonard, and Leonard says to him, “Pastor Hunt, I appreciate you looking after Bri until Kath –” and the pastor interrupts to say “I had a feeling she’d come back around.” Okay so everyone was in on some plot to have the spirit of Crystal possess Kathy, I guess. Then, Bernard, the senile Alzheimer’s patient who was arrested for rape and concealing Crystal’s body, jauntily walks past the house, looks up at Kathy-possessed-by-Crystal and waves to his grandson Leonard, and we hear him say, “I see we have the same taste.”

There you have it. I’ve laid out how this movie ends, but contrary to the title of the post, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully explain it.