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 encounters a middle-school bully who calls him "Novocaine". Sherry gets revenge for Nathan by tricking the bully into drinking a shot of hot sauce; the two then spend the night together at Nathan's home.
The next morning a gang of robbers led by Simon Greely, Sherry's adoptive brother, take over the credit union. Simon murders Nathan's boss Nigel after he refuses to give Simon the code to the vault. Nathan gives Simon the code after he threatens Sherry. Police arrive and a shootout ensues in which the robbers escape with Sherry as a hostage. After placing a tourniquet on a wounded policeman, Nathan steals a police car and follows the robbers, but ends up following the car with only a single robber, Ben. Nathan fights Ben in a restaurant kitchen and eventually shoots Ben dead, but not before severely burning his hand while retrieving Ben's gun from a deep fryer.
Nathan, with help from his friend Roscoe, tracks down Zeno, a tattoo artist who had done a tattoo on Ben's arm. He interrogates Zeno in his tattoo parlor after a brawl, obtaining Ben's last name. A professional colleague is then able to provide Nathan with Ben's home address, after Nathan runs a credit check under the guise of Ben as a potential client.
Ben had booby-trapped his house and Nathan ends up stuck in a snare. In desperation, he calls Roscoe. Another robber, Ben's brother Andre, discovers Nathan while searching for Ben and shortly after is informed by Simon that Ben is dead. Andre begins to torture Nathan, who feigns feeling pain. Roscoe arrives and together they overpower and kill Andre. Police officer Mincy Langston and her partner Coltraine Duffy arrive at the house and arrest Roscoe, whose distraction allows Nathan to escape.
Nathan locates Sherry and Simon at an auto shop, where Simon reveals that Sherry is his adoptive sister and accomplice. She originally intended to seduce Nathan to learn the bank vault code but developed real feelings for him and was horrified that Simon needlessly murdered her boss, Nigel. Simon tries to kill Nathan against Sherry's protests, but he is shot by an arriving Coltraine, while Nathan is arrested. Simon in turn shoots Coltraine dead and wounds Mincy, escaping in the ambulance holding Nathan. Sherry pursues the ambulance with Mincy and Roscoe.
Nathan is able to slip out of the handcuff by dislocating his thumb and uses a defibrillator on Simon, causing him to crash. The two continue to fight, with Simon breaking Nathan's arm. Sherry arrives and attacks Simon while Roscoe drives Mincy to the hospital. As Simon 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, exhausted by his injuries.
Nathan awakes in a hospital two weeks later, having been put in a medically induced coma to recover. He learns from Mincy that he has been given a deal of six months of house arrest and five years of probation for his actions due to saving the life of the police officer after the shootout.
One year later Nathan visits Sherry in prison, who has eight months left on her sentence. They share a slice of cherry pie, which Sherry had introduced him to on their first date. As the prison guards lead Sherry back to her cell, Nathan chews and smiles.
Reception
Box office
Novocaine grossed $19.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $14.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $34.2 million. [4] [5]
In the United States and Canada, Novocaine was released alongside Black Bag , Opus (which also starred Midthunder), 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. [3] [16] [17] 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). [18] [19] In its second weekend, the film made $3.7 million (a drop of 58%), falling to fourth place. [20] [21] The film dropped out of the box office top ten in its fourth weekend. [22]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , 81% of 203 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 use its concept, Novocaine is the opposite of a pain to watch." [23] Metacritic , which uses a weighted average , assigned the film a score of 58 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. [24] 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. [18]
Writing for the Chicago Tribune , Michael Phillips praised Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder's performances, but felt the film ultimately "[squandered] a promising setup, with an unusually effective depiction of a romance in its first-date stage." [25]
