After a Good Start, Novocaine Goes Numb

Novocaine starts with a premise that is Crank-like in its absurdity, deepens it with feeling, and then rams full speed ahead through a litany of stupidities. A common message-board-level complaint about a movie is that it “doesn’t know what it wants to be.” Here’s a helpful correction: Most movies, even bad ones, know. What Novocaine seems less sure of is why it wants to be. To sell a high-concept screenplay, probably.

You can see why someone would buy it. Nathan Cain (Jack Quaid) has a rare genetic condition that doesn’t allow his body to feel any pain, nor sensations of heat, nor cold. This leaves him both resilient and fragile. A fist, knife, or bullet might not faze him, but could still kill him; our bodies have pain receptors for a reason, and Nathan’s body is incapable of receiving crucial warning signs. Once given an approximate life expectancy of 25, he has surpassed it through learned vigilance: He only consumes drinkable foods, because he has been warned that he could accidentally bite off his own tongue, and he must set a three-hour timer reminding him to use the bathroom, lest he strain his bladder without realizing it.

In middle school, the condition garnered him the nickname “Novocaine,” something he took as cruelty but, as the lovely Sherry (Amber Midthunder) points out, actually sounds pretty cool. (It’s also the kind of play on words more common to screenwriters than actual 11-year-olds, but then, maybe the distance between those two groups is not as wide as we would like to believe.) Sherry is Nathan’s co-worker at a bank, and he has already been nursing a quiet crush on her when she asks him to lunch. They turn out to like each other quite a bit, in scenes that Quaid and Midthunder play with sweetness and likability. They’re cute together, and surprisingly believable as a pair of misfit maybe-lovers (who also both happen to be plenty good-looking). Though the trailers have indicated that Novocaine will soon take advantage of its hero’s condition for bloodier means, the time it sets aside for an emotional buy-in to this relationship is much appreciated.

The buy-in is necessary because the movie’s treatment of Nathan’s condition is actually maddeningly uneven. At multiple points, he indicates that he can feel pressure, just not pain, which would seem to neutralize the tongue issue (is it really only pain that keeps us from constantly gnashing our tongues during dinner?). Maybe that’s supposed to be an overabundance of caution than a true physical problem, but other inconsistencies linger. Sherry, a direct type, asks mid-seduction about whether he can feel pleasure, and he half-demurs. He can feel certain things, he assures her vaguely. So … what, exactly? Their sex scene remains off-screen, the question unanswered. It makes sense that Nathan isn’t completely numb – he can walk, after all – but if it’s truly only pain that doesn’t come through, why can’t he feel the typically non-painful warnings from his bladder or tongue? (And unless he’s lying to Sherry about the cherry pie she offers him on their first date, his tongue can receive some sensation.)

These are not the questions you’re really supposed to ask about Novocaine, but the opening half-hour is good enough, involving enough, to prompt them as a matter of curiosity or clarification. They only turn to nitpicking later, because as the movie goes on, so much of the story becomes increasingly careless, making those earlier moments seem slipshod in retrospect. Nathan and Sherry’s bank branch is robbed by a group of thugs who murder the manager with almost no provocation, then massacre at least a dozen police officers whose presence at the scene somehow confounds and panics them. Led by a manic creep (Ray Nicholson), they take Sherry hostage and abscond with some money. Impulsively, and faced with the prospect of delayed back-up, a smitten Nathan steals a cop car and zooms after them. The crooks, initially thinking it’s the actual police, refer to this as having a “tail” they need to lose. Guys, no; you’re murderers in a high-speed car chase.

We do eventually learn more details about the original plan for this robbery, and, if anything, it makes even less sense once they’re revealed. Again, this isn’t the point; the point is to throw the mild-mannered Nathan into a series of confrontations where he must abandon his sense of caution and embrace the fact that he can, say, reach into an active fryer to retrieve a gun, inducing gruesome burns that he cannot feel and lending him a distinct strategic advantage as thugs attempt to kill him. As he fights his way through a hostile underworld, attempting to track down the girl who might be The One, his wounds accumulate and the film’s commitment to gnarly gore stands firm. Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen arrive at an unusual principle that may chill actors to the bone: People simulating pain in a mostly-bloodless fight scene simply aren’t as disturbing as seeing gore without any direct reaction attached to it.

This ties into a potentially clever gamified dimension to the film: Because Nathan spends so much time in isolation, he’s a practiced player of video games, complete with an internet-only bestie (Jacob Batalon) who has his virtual back. His action-movie antics mirror an in-game avatar: He won’t feel any pain, which means he needs to keep his eye on the life-bar, as it were; a respawn will not be forthcoming if he, say, gets run through by an enemy. Curiously, Berk, Olsen, and screenwriter Lars Jacobson don’t make all that much of the parallel, even as they’re drawing everything out well past the 90-minute mark that would probably ideal for such aspiring Crank-level kineticism.

Novocaine is a nicer movie than the Crank pictures, which smirkingly embrace their own provocative video-game nihilism (and which feel like the direct inspiration for Nathan’s revelation that a jolt of adrenaline will allow his body to power past its various non-pain weaknesses). It’s also not nearly so much fun. Most amusing is a sequence where Nathan makes his way through a rigged bad-guy hideout, treating a series of elaborate booby traps as nuisances rather than the life-threateners they really are. Least amusing is the endless series of plot and action extensions granted via assorted cops, followed by dutiful attempts, mostly unsuccessful, to account for some real-world consequences. By the time the movie circles back to its characters from all the interchangeably nasty fights, its sincerity has become compromised. Nathan’s numbness becomes the movie’s: selective to the point of nonsense.

Directors: Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Writer: Lars Jacobson
Starring: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Jacob Batalon, Ray Nicholson
Release Date: March 14

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.