★★★★ out of ★★★★★
Intensity 🩸🩸🩸1/2 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Jorge Thielen Armand
The shadow of colonialism clashes violently with local rights when a woman inherits her family’s cacao plantation in Venezuela.
Official synopsis
When the heiress to a colonial cacao plantation in Venezuela comes from abroad to claim her inheritance, she is forced to confront the land’s current occupants as well as its dark, violent legacy.
Review
Writer/director Jorge Thielen Armand’s Death Has No Master (La muerte no tiene dueño; Venezuela/Italy/Canada/Luxembourg, 2026) is a solid blend of thriller and social commentary elements. The clash between a woman who has inherited a Venezuelan cacao plantation and the locals who have lived on the property since she moved to Italy years before is inevitable, and this being a genre film, things are bound to get bloody.
Asia Argento plays Caro, who returns after her father’s death to the mansion where she grew up to sort out selling the property. Dogreika Tovar portrays Sonia, a former employee of the plantation who has lived in the mansion with her young son Maiko (Yermain Sequera) for many years and even rents out one of the rooms. Sonia lays claim to the place that she feels Caro abandoned, and local law officers side with Sonia.
Argento and Sovar head up a fine, sizable cast. It would be a disservice, spoiler wise, to first-time viewers to list further characters and the intrigue that they have a part in, but suffice it to say that Armand has crafted a chilling tale boasting believable characters and increasingly tense situations. Argento’s portrayal of Caro is intense, as she takes on the colonial attitudes of her deceased father down to the clothes and hat of the style he wore. As Sonia quips, the only thing missing is a whip. Tovar is terrific as a single mother who feels she has a right to live on the property and will do what she needs to do to defend that right.
The events build to a suspenseful third act in which the two women’s battle of wills inevitably boils over. Armand is unsparing and unflinching when this happens.
Conclusion
Death Has No Master boasts impressive set design, direction, performances, and Luis Armando Arteaga’s superb cinematography. It is a harrowing slice of genre cinema with horror elements that balances its chills with its social commentary wonderfully.
Death Has No Master screens as part of Fantastic Fest, which runs September 17-24, 2026 in Austin, Texas.