Novocaine

On tap this week is a new action thriller comedy and its K-pop soundtrack. The micro-teaser at the start of the official trailer for Novocaine has star Jack Quaid introducing himself to the audience. He then punches the camera, which cues the chorus riff from BLACKPINK’s 2020 mega hit “How You Like That.” All this happens in the first 6 seconds.

At 0:07 we cut to Nathan (Jack Quaid) on a date with Shari (Amber Midthunder), his co-worker from a San Diego bank. Instead of BLACKPINK, we now hear the drums and chords of a rollicking synthpop shuffle groove. At a flashback (0:17) of Nathan pulling a bullet out of his arm with a smile on his face (he has congenital insensitivity to pain), the music cuts out for emphasis, leaving space for the squelchy surgical sound effects.

The shuffle groove returns at 0:20, now with a gritty bass synth added, as Shari and Nathan start making love. When robbers in Santa suits begin firing machine guns in a bank robbery at 0:33, the music transitions to the upbeat dance break from “How You Like That.”

Shari is taken hostage, and when Nathan decides to commandeer a police car at 0:47 we hear the title hook from “How You Like That.” At 0:56 as Nathan is in his first gunfight (in a restaurant kitchen), we appropriately hear BLACKPINK rapper Lisa’s chorus line “badabing badaboom boom boom.”

The construction of K-pop hits like this one usually includes many catchy hooks. One of the memorable lines from “How You Like That” is the post-chorus rap, “Look at you, now look at me.” At 1:05 this lyric is placed in the trailer, with the end of this lyric synched to the moment Nathan fires a sizzling gun (1:10).

A cut to silence leaves space for us to hear Nathan’s gurgling about-to-vomit stomach at 1:15. Then from 1:16 to 1:31, the soundtrack is Lisa’s rap verse from “How You Like That” but the music is lowered in the mix to make space for the dialogue.

From 1:32-2:16 the trailer drills home the central plot feature of Nathan being unable to feel pain, through a series of gruesome fights. The music here comes in fragments, relying more on BRAAAM-type accents with occasional snatches of BLACKPINK vocals thrown in. Mostly though, here the music stays out of the way of the dialogue and the flesh-ripping sound effects.

It has been a while since Trailaurality blogged about a trailer with a K-pop soundtrack–not since Shang-Chi in 2021. And though we didn’t blog about it, the placement of the BTS song “Dynamite” in the 2021 trailer for Clifford the Big Red Dog is another great K-pop feature. For trailers which rely on remixing pop hits for their soundtrack, the option of licensing K-pop songs, with their abundance of catchy hooks, strong propulsive energy, and diversity of contrasting song sections, offers exciting possibilities for trailer music editors.

Novocaine is in theatres March 14th.

— Jack Hui Litster