Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIPA) is no laughing matter.
The extremely rare physical condition stops those affected from feeling pain or temperature, with the average life expectancy for the 1 in 125 million who are diagnosed no more than 25. Even more grimly, 20% of those born with it die by the age of three, as bodies can’t feel temperature, making hypothermia a grave threat.
It’s hardly light-hearted subject matter for an action-comedy, and this is something that the team behind Novocaine are firmly aware of, with the film fighting back against the idea that this would make someone indestructible in the face of danger. The opening act of the movie stays away from the genre altogether, taking pains to highlight the many ways the condition would limit someone being able to experience even the basic joys in life.
Jack Quaid, who plays the unlikely hero Nathan Caine, stresses that he never lost sight of this, even as the film increasingly depicts how much punishment his body can take without his character knowing.
He told Zavvi: “I wanted to do as much research as possible. Obviously, this movie isn’t a completely accurate representation of the condition, and we definitely take it to a very hyper-real place, but I wanted to be able to understand the reality of the condition from an emotional perspective.
“Nathan is a character who by necessity keeps himself in a deeply controlled environment for his own safety, knowing that he can still get hurt from his condition even though he can’t feel it. When we're introduced to him, he’s living inside a bubble he doesn’t need to because of his fears about safety; he’s made himself a very lonely person, and it’s Amber Midthunder’s character who helps bring him out of his shell.
“What really struck me about Nathan was that, despite the limitations of this disorder, he’s not a bitter or angry person – he remains positive and upbeat and wants the best for others. He’s one of the more heroic characters I’ve played, and I love that he’s able to turn this disability into a superpower for the sake of someone he loves.”
When first approached to direct Lars Jacobsen’s screenplay, filmmakers Dan Berk and Robert Olsen also sensed that the audience would only be able to go along for the ride if the depiction of living with this physical condition was grounded in reality. In fact, the only big battle they had with producers and studio executives was in ensuring that the film’s opening act remained a character-driven exploration of life with a debilitating condition.
Berk told Zavvi: “One of the most compelling aspects of the script is that this condition is a real one, which means anybody telling this story must be sensitive towards it. You need the time to explain it, as if you just saw the trailer for the movie, which tries to explain the concept in a short amount of time, you might think it’s just a fun superpower, which is obviously not the case.
“We fought hard to keep a character-focused first act so that we could establish Nathan’s life and routine, showing how he protects himself from his condition and how that’s isolated him to the point that every day is grey and monotonous. It’s really the bare minimum if you want to make a movie with this subject matter, and it’s a great contrast to when Sherry (Midthunder) comes into his life and the movie kicks up a gear; it helps an audience buy into the idea that he’d risk everything in such a way to save a woman who has changed his perspective entirely.”
Whilst watching Novocaine, you can imagine the worse version of the movie, which depicts Nathan’s disability as an obstacle he needs to overcome, rather than something he needs to embrace if he wants to be a hero. That was something the director duo consciously strove to avoid.
Olsen explained: “The goal was to tell a story that was empowering, to show that he could fully realise himself within the boundaries of his condition and see that it shouldn’t stop him establishing relationships or opening himself up to the world. We wanted to make sure that we didn’t tell a story about someone “overcoming” their condition.
“If you’re in a position like Nathan is, there’s a chance you can become isolated because you don’t want to keep explaining your differences to people. And I think that led to the other aspect which drew us to the screenplay, and why we think this will be relatable to people who don’t have a rare disorder, as the isolation he feels is more commonplace in an age where we’re separated from others, and only contacting the outside world through our computers.
“He is afraid of the outside world in the way that things we see online make us afraid of the people around us, and the chance to tell a story about somebody who steps out of that space to find companionship and the chance to create a relationship really struck us. Few people can relate to his physical condition, but they can relate to his emotional condition at the beginning, of that self-enforced state of loneliness.”
This is why, for a movie with a lot of intense stunt work, Quaid knew from the offset that the key to making audiences invest in the story was authentically building his relationship with Midthunder’s character. Once he begins opening up, the movie plays out as a sincere romcom – until disaster finally strikes, anyway.
“The whole movie hinges on whether or not you root for their relationship”, Quaid continued. “So we knew going in that the rom com element was just as important, if not more, than nailing the action scenes; if you don’t care about these characters, you’re not going to care about the unbelievable stakes.
“We both made sure that we got a lot of rehearsals for those scenes, as they were the key to the story. Plus, Amber and I had been two ships passing in the night for a while, as we have a mutual friend in Dan Trachtenberg, who directed her in Prey, and me on the pilot of The Boys; he’d call me whilst he was shooting Prey telling me that she was the greatest person of all time and that I had to work with her, and he’d be doing the same thing about me to her!”
The final piece in the puzzle was having an intense, memorable villain who could jeopardise the love story and force the lead to fully come out of his shell and fight to save his new partner. That arrives in the form of Ray Nicholson’s Simon, who robs the bank both characters work at, taking Sherry as a hostage as his crew makes a run for it.
Nicholson was previously seen in Smile 2, channelling his father’s iconic disturbed look from The Shining in a warped dream sequence, but here he got a chance to make a psychopath entirely of his own design.
He told Zavvi: “A lot of the acting choices I made were to just view everybody in the scene with me as objects in my plan, which was a lot of fun! I did do a lot of research though, and not just because I wanted to further that connection to that character so much as I just had a curiosity about the psychopath mindset – I do think we’re closer to people on that wavelength than we’d like to admit.
“I read a lot about the psychology of psychopaths, and what differentiates them from other mental diseases, and watched a lot of documentaries. The challenge was finding a way to embed everything I learned into the character; the research started as curiosity and just grew from there!”
Novocaine is released in UK cinemas on Friday, 28th April.
