Jack Quaid's feeling no pain in the gruesomely fun Novocaine trailer

You ever load up a trailer with a bit of a shrug, only to be quickly charmed by its energy? That was our experience with the following promo for Novocaine, the latest film from Significant Other and Villains directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen. (Working from an outside script, from Lars Jacobson, for once, instead of going the writers-directors route.)

The trailer lays out the premise pretty quickly: The Boys' Jack Quaid plays Nate, a completely regular guy who happens to live with a congenital insensitivity to pain. When the girl he's fallen for (Prey's Amber Midthunder) gets taken hostage by bank robbers, Nate decides to abuse his body in a lot of really gross ways in order to turn himself into an action hero, with the writer and directors finding increasingly ludicrous ways for him to hurt himself in pursuit of his goals.

Now, we're pretty sure that actual people with CIP—those who didn't die in childhood, which is a lot of them, because you actually do need pain as a warning system to keep yourself alive, turns out—will probably not be jazzed about the film turning their very real, very life-threatening condition into a "superpower." But taken strictly as an action movie, and paired with Quaid's abundant gameness, it really does look like a formula for some silly scenes of pitch-black comedy, as Nate embraces self-destruction in an effort to save the day. (Also, Jacob Batalon is there. Hey, Jacob Batalon!)

Novocaine slams its way into theaters on March 14, 2025.