# Novocaine (2025 film)

Novocaine is a 2025 American action comedy film directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and written by Lars Jacobson. The film stars Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Betty Gabriel, and Jacob Batalon. Its plot follows Nathan Caine (Quaid), a bank employee with the inability to feel pain who goes out to rescue his co-worker (Midthunder) after she is taken hostage by a group of bank robbers.
Novocaine was released in the United States by Paramount Pictures on March 14, 2025, to positive reviews from critics.

## Plot

Nathan Caine is a mild-mannered introvert with congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) working as an assistant manager at a trust credit union in San Diego. His co-worker Sherry Margrave is romantically interested in him, but Nathan is hesitant due to his condition and inexperience with women. At a bar with Sherry, Nathan meets his middle school bully, who calls him "Novocaine." Sherry gets revenge for Nathan by tricking him into drinking a shot of hot sauce; the two then spend the night together.
The next morning, on Christmas Eve, a gang of robbers dressed up in Santa suits led by Simon Greenly rob the credit union and take Sherry as a hostage. Nathan impulsively steals a cop car in pursuit of the car in which Sherry is being held, but he follows the wrong car and ends up in a confrontation with another robber, Ben Clark, in a restaurant kitchen. He eventually shoots Ben dead, but not before severely burning his hand while retrieving Ben’s gun from a deep fryer.
After noting Ben's tattoo, Nathan tracks down the artist, Zeno, and interrogates him for Ben's address, hoping to find Sherry. After a brawl, Nathan manages to get Ben's last name from Zeno, and he calls his only friend, Roscoe Dixon, a gamer whom he has never met in person, to find Ben's home address. Ben's house is booby-trapped, and Nathan ends up stuck in a snare; in desperation, he calls Roscoe. Ben's brother Andre enters the house and begins to torture Nathan, who feigns feeling pain. Roscoe arrives, and together they overpower and kill Andre. Police officers Mincy Langston and her partner Coltraine Duffy arrive at the house and arrest Roscoe, who has switched clothes with Nathan.
Nathan locates Sherry and Simon at an auto shop and discovers she is Simon's sister and an accomplice to the heist; she originally intended to seduce Nathan to learn the bank vault code but developed real feelings for him. Simon tries to kill Nathan against Sherry's protests, but he is shot by an arriving Coltraine, while Sherry and Nathan are arrested. Simon in turn shoots Coltraine dead and escapes in the ambulance holding Nathan. Sherry frees herself from the handcuffs, and she pursues the ambulance while Roscoe takes a wounded Mincy to the hospital.
After regaining consciousness, Nathan breaks free from the handcuffs and defibrillates Simon, causing him to crash. Having had enough of Nathan, Simon breaks his arm just as Sherry arrives. As soon as he is about to kill Sherry, Nathan injects himself with adrenaline and kills Simon by sticking his exposed arm bone through Simon's jaw before falling unconscious, finally exhausted by his injuries.
When Nathan awakes in a hospital two weeks later, he learns he has been sentenced to six months of house arrest instead of a lengthy prison sentence due to his saving the life of the cop whose car he took to pursue Sherry.
One year later, he visits Sherry, who is near the end of a short sentence for her role in the robbery. They share a cherry pie, the first physical food Nathan ever ate, which Sherry had introduced him to on their first date. As the prison guards lead Sherry back to her cell, Nathan chews and smiles.

## Cast

* Jack Quaid as Nathan "Novocaine" Caine, a sheltered bank executive who can't feel pain
* Amber Midthunder as Sherry Margrave, Nathan's love interest, who is kidnapped by bank robbers
* Ray Nicholson as Simon Greenly, a bank robber
* Jacob Batalon as Roscoe Dixon, Nathan's online gaming friend
* Betty Gabriel as Mincy Langston, an officer of the SDPD
* Matt Walsh as Coltraine Duffy, an officer of the SDPD
* Conrad Kemp as Andre Clark, a bank robber
* Evan Hengst as Ben Clark, a bank robber and Andre's brother
* Craig Jackson as Nigel, Nathan's manager
* Lou Beatty Jr. as Earl, one of Nate's bank clients
* Garth Collins as Zeno, a tattoo artist and an acquaintance of Ben's

## Production

In October 2023, it was announced that Jack Quaid would star in the action thriller film Novocaine, directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen and written by Lars Jacobson. It is the first film from FilmNation Entertainment's production label Infrared. In February 2024, Paramount Pictures acquired the film, with Amber Midthunder also announced as part of the cast. In March, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon, Betty Gabriel, and Matt Walsh joined the cast of the film. Principal photography began on April 8, 2024, in Cape Town, South Africa. The film was financed through Domain Entertainment.

## Release

Novocaine was released in the United States on March 14, 2025.

## Reception
### Box office

As of March 17, 2025, Novocaine has grossed $9.5 million in the United States and Canada, and $1.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $11.3 million.
In the United States and Canada, Novocaine was released alongside Black Bag, Opus, The Last Supper, and the wide release of The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, and was projected to gross $7–12 million from 3,365 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $3.9 million on its first day, including an estimated $1.8 million from preview screenings. It went on to debut to $8.8 million, topping the box office in the lowest-grossing weekend of 2025 to date ($54.7 million for all films in theaters).

### Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 82% of 142 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Getting an adrenaline shot from Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder's considerable charm while finding increasingly demented ways to utilize its concept, Novocaine is the opposite of a pain to watch." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed by PostTrak gave it an 84% overall positive score, with 58% saying they would "definitely recommend" it.