Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid) is a man unable to feel pain of any sort. He lives a sheltered life designed to keep him safe from the simple everyday things that we all take for granted that can unintentionally kill him. That is until he gets asked on a date by Sherry (Amber Midthunder). A woman who changes his life one evening and is then kidnapped by bank robbers the next day. Nate, throwing caution to the wind sets out on her trail. 

Novocaine is a high concept movie based on an extreme example of a real life disease. CIPA renders a person unable to feel certain sensory inputs making something as mundane as taking a shower or eating solid foods a possible death trap. The film interprets this as an excuse to have Nate recklessly pursue Sherry getting into increasingly more absurd and violent set pieces played partly for laughs and partly for gore hounds as we see him oblivious to the unthinkable violence happening to his body. 

It takes some time to set up Nate’s personal life and situation. Something that should make us connect more with his personal plight, but in the realms of a film that feels like it runs twenty minutes too long is perhaps a luxury with which it could have done without. Ultimately Nate is a lonely guy, whose over focus on keeping himself safe has left him isolated. By stepping out of his safety zone he gets to feel the warm glow of both friendship and love by way of physically meeting his online buddy Roscoe (Jacob Batalon) and opening himself up to Sherry. But that is not what people will be going to watch Novocaine for… what they will be going to it for is the extreme violence and laughs. 

But do you know what? Novocaine just goes on a bit too long. Each set piece one ups itself from the one before and after a while I found myself ironically getting a little numb to both the humour and the gore. They are occasionally funny and they are definitely gory, especially as the film goes on… but boy does it go on. 

Novocaine has a great idea and is fronted by an actor who has already made a name for himself playing morally ambiguous characters we can root for. But this should have taken a lesson from films similar in nature such as Crank or Run Lola Run and kept its running time to strictly under 90 minutes.