If Noah Kahan: Out of Body feels anticlimactic, there’s a good reason for that. Just as there is a good reason Netflix timed the documentary’s April 13 launch a scant week ahead of the release of Kahan’s new album, The Great Divide. And no, it’s not because it’s an easy, synergistic marketing stunt — or, at least, not solely.
There is nothing easy about Out of Body, a film that is as surprising for viewers as it was seemingly uncomfortable for Kahan to make. The reason it feels unresolved is that Kahan’s new album is the ending the film doesn’t quite reach, the answer to the question that haunts the 90-minute run time and Kahan himself: After suddenly reaching a level of success beyond his wildest dreams, what’s next for the now world-famous musician? And can he rise again to meet everyone’s expectations, including his own?
Filmed primarily during Kahan’s whirlwind two-year Stick Season tour, Out of Body could have easily been just that — a tour documentary. It opens with the obvious grand finale, Kahan’s two-night Fenway Park run in July 2024, then rewinds to show how he got there.
Vermont is practically another character in the film, as director Nick Sweeney explores Kahan’s hometown of Strafford, where the locals display exactly the sort of “kind, not nice” honesty you’d expect. The general store moves plenty of Kahan merchandise, even as the clerk admits he doesn’t listen to Kahan’s music himself. The beauty of the landscape is undercut by two townies pointing out the new Dunkin’ that opened, while an old-timer on a tractor dubs Vermont “the coldest place in hell.”
Kahan shares that same brutal, often self-deprecating honesty as he opens up about his life. His relationship with his siblings and especially his parents takes the spotlight as Kahan grapples with how his deeply personal lyrics have exposed his family to the public without their consent — although their presence in the film (and the amount of home-video footage included) makes it clear they gladly participated in the documentary.
Kahan also reveals that his father, Josh, suffered a brain injury in a life-altering bicycle accident that left a deep impact on the singer. It’s here that Kahan displays a juvenile prickliness that seems at odds with the sort of curated puff piece you’d expect from a star-produced doc — Kahan is credited as one of several executive producers. But the scene reads as genuine for a young adult adjusting to a more mature relationship with his parents.
As a mental health advocate, Kahan has always been open about his depression and anxiety, in his lyrics and elsewhere. But in Out of Body, he also admits to body dysmorphia and a history of disordered eating. It all weaves together — the guilt with his parents, discomfort with his body and exhaustion from touring — into a deep sense of displacement and creative emptiness that leave Kahan in a slump, struggling to write his next album. In the film’s final moments, Kahan is just beginning to find his path forward again. It ends on a hopeful note as he looks at real estate in the Upper Valley to set down new roots and his inspiration finally begins to spark.
The fact that we know he did, eventually, write that album, just like we know he did eventually buy a house, doesn’t diminish the impact of the film. What should be a victory lap becomes a portrait of a man lost in his own stardom and the pressure to shine even brighter, and that’s what makes Out of Body so fascinating. Whatever the documentary was supposed to be at the jump, the story Kahan and Sweeney discovered along the way was messy, unfinished and admirably authentic. A work in progress, just like Kahan.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Noah Kahan’s Netflix Doc Is Messy and Real”
This article appears in April 29 • 2026.
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