“Everyone is hiding something. We’re all looking for someone to show it to.”
Novocaine is a bleak love story. It’s another viscous and visceral black comedy, an action movie that dances on the edges of sadistic torture-porn. It is savage, silly, and definitely not for the squeamish. The movie is full of fight scenes that are inelegant, brutal, brutish, and bloody. Novocaine is a truncated retelling of the Hero’s Journey monomyth, where a 1st level yutz with a special gift levels up through conflict and adversity until he dominates and pushes through gory boss battles on his way to the final fight where he saves the girl. In this particular instance, the hapless hero’s “special” gift is that he has a genetic disorder called Chronic Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis. CIPA means exactly what it sounds like; people with this disorder cannot feel pain. Novocaine is the unholy baby of Matthew Vaughn’s 2010 film, Kickass and Joel Schumacher’s controversial 1993 movie, Falling Down, who then spent its childhood hanging out with any number of Jackie Chan pictures. A weird mélange of charming romance, churning gore, clever quips, and cracking compound bone fractures, Novocaine is a squicky and fun Jack Quaid vehicle.
Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen from a story by Lars Jacobson, Novocaine is a 2025 Paramount Pictures release starring Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Conrad Kemp, Evan Hengst, Matt Walsh and Betty Gabriel.
“Is that one of our bank robbers?”
“I hope so. It would be a shame if that was the real Santa.”
It is getting close to Christmas. Nathan Caine (Quaid) is a peculiar man living a regimented and relatively solitary life. He is afflicted with a genetic disorder, CIPA, that prevents him from feeling pain. He has constructed an existence full of systems and plans to prevent injuries that might occur that he won’t notice, which could lead to infection, sepsis, and death. Avoiding most social interactions, he spends most of his free time online in multiplayer video games with his internet friend, Roscoe (Batalon). He works as the assistant manager of a San Diego credit union where he occasionally bends the rules to keep his clients in their homes. He also has a huge crush on the new girl, Sherry (Midthunder). He knows he’s not a social person, but when she approaches him in the coffee room and asks him out, after he finishes stammering, he goes for it.
He finds that she’s much more complex than he suspected; she is a foster child, a successful artist who’s paintings focus on suicidal ideation, and a chameleon who turns the tables on an antagonist who had been tormenting Nate at the bar.
At the end of their date, she takes him out for pie. Nate usually avoids solid foods, blending everything he consumes into a smoothie so as not to bite his tongue off, but she convinces him to have his very first slice of pie. The warm apple pastry explodes sensations in his mouth, the likes of which he’s never experienced. Afterwards, she travels home with him, where she takes him to his bed and gives him other sensations he’s never experienced.
He wakes to find Sherry gone. She’s left him with a note that lifts his spirits. He activates his systems and routines, getting ready for work while feeling like a giant. He goes through the motions at the credit union, hoping for a chance to talk to Sherry, but before he can, three heavily armed thugs dressed in Santa outfits burst into the bank, demanding access to the safe. After ventilating the manager’s skull when he refuses to give them the combination, the leader, Simon (Nicholson) turns to Nate. They are puzzled when pummeling him has no effect, but when the squad turns their guns on to Sherry, Nate spits out the numbers that allows the burglars access to the safe. Hitting Nate in the head hard enough to concuss and drop him, the robbers bag their spoils and escape, taking Sherry with them as a hostage.
They move in stack formation like military professionals on their way out. When the cops arrive, the robbers open up with their M4s and lay waste to the response team. They hop into two cars, with Ben (Hengst) taking his own ride while Simon and Andre (Kemp) take off in another car with the loot and Sherry. Nate recovers, and after a moment of empathy that forces him to rescue a bleeding out cop and tie off the policeman’s thigh wound with a belt-forged torniquet, he takes the cop’s weapon and keys, steals his cruiser, and continues the pursuit.
Nate is able to run a distracted Ben off the road, and the crook flees into a spiderweb warren of alleyways, ultimately confronting his pursuer, Nate, in a restaurant kitchen. When they battle initially, knives, rolling pins, and pistols are the weapons of choice, but moments into the brawl, a slapped-away Glock spirals upwards and into the hot oil fryer. Nate realizes that Ben is a combat veteran, realizes he probably knows a dozen ways to kill Nate with his bare hands, but his pistol is simmering right there on the left in the deep fryer, and Nate can’t feel any pain.
Will Nate be able to sacrifice his systems and his body for the woman he has decided he loves? Will Roscoe get over his hesitation and help his only IRL friend? Will Sherry decide whose side she really wants to be on? Will Simon stop grinning like an idiot and listen to what his sister has to say? Can Nate placate the cops, stay out of the hoosegow, and save Sherry before he drops due to shock and massive blood loss? Please watch Novocaine to find out.
“I’m just a thief. I’ve come to thieve.”
Though it is an uneven film, there is a lot to like in Novocaine. The dialogue is snappy, with several laugh lines that got the audience audibly involved. There are two fantastic musical cues from REM and The Darkness that work incredibly well. Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder’s scenes crackle with chemistry. She manages to steal almost every moment she has on screen. Her character starts out as a refrigerator candidate but ends the film quite formidable. Her exploits are all realistically written into her backstory, and she displays a great deal of agency once the film’s grand twist is out in the open. She reveals more about her past while pushing Mincy’s police cruiser to the limit like she’s a stock car racer.
Jacob Batalon is expanding on his “computer assistant” character that he’s played several times in the MCU. In this instance, like in 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, his character, Roscoe, gets out from behind the desk, going beyond the role of a cyber-partner and getting involved in the really-real world, assisting his friend Nate and trying to keep him from certain death.
Quaid is endearing and engaging. The same thing cannot be said for Ray Nicholson, son of Jack. While he possesses his father’s terrifying trademark grin, his character, Simon, lacks charisma. There is nothing behind the smile for the audience to sympathize with.
The thing about Novocaine is that, for the most part, the story is vividly telegraphed. The plotline is visible for miles except for the one big twist that comes out of nowhere and upends the picture. Unfortunately, there is no grace in the (many) fights. There is no flow, no dance, just man’s cruelty to man, blood spurting and bones crunching. Eyes burst, ribs shatter, thoracic cavities are penetrated. The fights all escalate into cartoonish absurdity. No one bleeds out. No one goes into shock. It’s almost like the characters are in a video game and restore their health bars between scenes.
Nate’s a gamer, and his screen name is MagicNateBall. This reviewer has heard a lot of Magic Eight-Ball jokes recently. It might mean something, but “ask again later.”
Some patients with the CIPA disorder don’t feel depression or anxiety and lack a normal fear response to erratic and aggressive behavior. Worry, grief, panic and dread are emotions that people with CIPA don’t understand because they are alien to their experiences. Novocaine depicts Nate’s abnormal response to absurdly violent, escalating adventures that he just perfectly accepts as par for the course. Nate has to save Sherry. She gave him her pie. Novocaine is a furious revenge romp mainlining vicious violence, blood splatters, banter, and gore. At the same time, it carries a successful and heartwarming yet star-crossed romance between a dork and a dangerous girl that works on many levels, even if the rest of the film isn’t worthy of their relationship. Maybe Novocaine will get a sequel where Sherry and Nate’s partnership can achieve their full potential, having left their (mostly) entertaining origin film behind.
Novocaine is in theatres 3/14/25.
Newsdesk 
Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher