Tag: jack-quaid

Novocaine (2025)

  • Director: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
  • Screenplay: Lars Jacobson
  • Cast: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Jacob Batalon
  • Cinematography: Jacques Jouffret
  • Editing: Christian Wagner
  • Score: Lorne Balfe, Andrew Kawczynski
  • Genre: Action comedy
  • Runtime: 110 minutes

Nathan Caine (Quaid) can’t feel pain. That’s his deal. His special power. He suffers from CIP – a congenital insensitivity to pain. It makes him a superhero of sorts, his identity complete with a name, his middle school moniker: Novocaine, like the anaesthetic drug.

All superheroes have an ordinary life as a cover story. Nathan’s is that he works as an assistant manager at a bank. He’s smitten by his co-worker, Sherry (Midthunder) but when she gets taken hostage by robbers, Nathan takes it upon himself to rescue Sherry, with messy results. Break a leg, Novocaine! (Not that he’d even register if that happened). Nathan needs to remember this condition doesn’t make him immortal so he can’t afford to have too cavalier an attitude. No pain, no gain? Well, not quite in this case.

It’s a delightfully diverting action romp which fully delivers on the madcap premise at every given opportunity. I think I laughed as much as I winced – more than a dozen times. You’d expect to become desensitised to seeing an implement plunging into Nathan’s body after the umpteenth time yet I still recoiled with horror.

There’s plenty of set up at the start to develop the characters enough for you to root for them and great comedic performances from man of the moment Jack Quaid, Midthunder and Ray Nicholson (the spitting image of his father Jack) as the lead goon. As you’d imagine, there’s gobs of gore as Nathan is battered, bruised, burnt and beaten. He’s in hot water – literally at one point, scalding his hand. Ouch!

My rating: 8 / 10

Companion (2025)

  • Director: Drew Hancock
  • Screenplay: Drew Hancock
  • Cast: Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, Megan Suri, Harvey Guillen, Rupert Friend
  • Cinematography: Eli Born
  • Editing: Brett W. Bachman, Josh Ethier
  • Score: Hrishikesh Hirway
  • Genre: Science fiction thriller
  • Runtime: 97 minutes

The opening sequence of ‘Companion‘ put me in mind of the last scene of ‘The Stepford Wives’; a young woman pushing a trolley down the aisle of a grocery store, everything seems a little too immaculate, there’s a heightened sense of reality. When the woman, Iris (Sophie Thatcher), locks eyes with Josh (Jack Quaid), there’s an instant spark between them.

Josh takes his new ‘girlfriend’ Iris with him on a trip to a lake house to meet his friends – the twist: she’s a companion robot. She’s designed to serve her owner; to satisfy their every whim. Anything they want – she must cater for. The concept really exposes the solipsism of human nature. Via a smartphone, the user can modify the bot’s intelligence level, eye colour, voice, language, and personality to suit their fancy. Ethically abhorrent.

Hold on a minute. He’s fucking an android? How does that even work…anatomically? Where does he insert his…? Josh gives me the ick, so my sympathies lie with Iris when the shit hits the fan. She’s not so docile; she bytes. And she’s not chuffed as (micro)chips to be kept as Josh’s personal robotic sex slave.

A gripping, wild ride (predictable in parts); it flips the script on the tired ‘robot malfunctions and goes berserk’ trope, giving the mistreated automaton a consciousness; something resembling humanity. The faulty wiring instead lies with humankind; their insatiable greed is the root of any chaos caused, rather than the blame being placed on ‘bad tech’ as usual.

My rating: 7 / 10