Stupid phone won't take anything!

My S4 Active is soft bricked. Had 5.0.1 on it and wanted to SIM unlock it but I can't find a guide to do it. So since everything points to 4.x, I wanted to downgrade the phone. Well apparently that doesn't work because now the piece of junk won't boot up again. I can put it in download mode, but the stupid phone won't take anything. Odin keeps failing to transfer files to it. I have tried many 4.x builds, but with no luck. The phone turns on and complains that it needs Kies to fix it. Says "Firmware upgrade encountered an issue. Please select recovery mode in Kies & try again." Well I have tried that and even the stupid Kies software doesn't detect it. So how the heck do I fix this phone before I take a hammer to it?