Is Novocaine’s Disorder Where You Can’t Feel Pain Real? What Congenital Insensitivity to Pain Is & How Accurate The Movie Is

WARNING: Major spoilers for Novocaine ahead!

The 2025 action-comedy Novocaine centers around a man who is unable to feel pain, which naturally begs the question of whether his condition is a real genetic disorder or merely a Hollywood plot device. With a cast led by Jack Quaid and Amber Midthunder, Novocaine follows a mild-mannered assistant bank manager who uses his inability to feel any pain to his advantage as he pursues a trio of bank robbers who took the woman he loves hostage. There is no shortage of gruesome injuries to the main character, Nathan Caine, as he forgoes personal safety for progress in his quest.

During his pursuit, Nate is shot by both a gun and a crossbow, boils his hand in oil to retrieve a gun, takes a homemade flail to the back, suffers a ton of head trauma, and even suffers from some brutal yet hilarious torture. While that’s all part of the entertainment factor of the movie, it seems unrealistic for anyone to have so much damage done to their body and keep fighting and running. The physical pain he is able to ignore from the beginning to the end of Novocaine is what makes his cinematic condition so fascinating.

Congenital Insensitivity To Pain Is A Real Disorder

Nathan Caine’s Condition Is Typically Referred To As CIPA

Nate’s condition is completely legitimate, down to the specific medical name he gives it when first discussing it with Sherry. Per Medline Plus, congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) is marked by two key elements: the inability to feel pain or changes in temperature, and severely decreased sweating. People suffering from CIPA heal slower than normal from bone and skin injuries, and can suffer from lasting effects of injuries healing incorrectly. Some studies estimate the frequency of the condition at around 1 in 125 million births, but it’s difficult to get firm estimates due to the high mortality rate.

As Nate describes, it leads to frequent severe injuries, especially burns and cuts, as it typically manifests at birth or in early infancy. Those suffering from CIPA often bite their tongues or fingers without knowing it, causing severe lacerations. Due to anhidrosis (lack of sweating), many individuals with CIPA suffer from hyperthermia (overheating) due to their body’s inability to cool itself with sweat, oftentimes with deadly consequences. It’s an extremely serious and typically lethal condition, although there are examples of people living to adulthood with CIPA with careful management, just as Nate does.

Is Novocaine’s Depiction Of Congenital Insensitivity To Pain Accurate?

It’s Trivialized For The Sake Of The Movie

While Novocaine does a good job of depicting Nate’s complete insensitivity to pain and extreme heat, it trivializes some of the more lethal, less cinematic effects of the condition. The fact that Nate’s body looks completely normal when the movie begins is not impossible for someone with CIPA, but it would be extremely unlikely given the inability to heal at a normal rate. As Nate notes at the art show when one of his middle school tormenters appears, he was beaten up frequently in his youth.

If that were the case, then he would likely have had developmental problems with injuries healing slowly while his bones and joints were still growing. He also shows none of the deadly effects of overheating given his anhidrosis, especially given how much he exerts himself. The movie also glosses over the fact that while he can’t feel pain, many of the injuries that he suffers would literally prevent his body from functioning normally, preventing him from continuing to run and fight. Novocaine gets some elements of the condition correct, but changes many others for the sake of the movie.

Source: Medline Plus

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Novocaine

8/10

Release Date

March 14, 2025

Runtime

110 Minutes

Director

Dan Berk, Robert Olsen

Writers

Lars Jacobson