Author: turnbowcayden

“A frustrated catholic schoolgirl accidentally forms a punk band with her “turd” friends and turns her campus upside down in Edie Arnold is a Loser, the contagiously charming, super energetic debut feature from writer/directors Kade Atwood and Megan Rico.

Edie (Adi Madden Cabrera) hates her catholic school. The only modicum of joy she gets is fantasizing about rock ‘n’ roll while (barely) playing drums for her school’s terrible church choir. Sharing her frustration is the choir organist, the explosively enthusiastic Frances (McKenna Tuckett). The choir is populated by very pretty girls with very little talent, making their jobs as accompanists torturous. They wile away their school days complaining with their more subdued friends Judith (Niki Rahimi) and Ellen (Alexa Paige), all while the popular girls giggle and point.”

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“Edie Arnold is a Loser, directed by Kade Atwood and Megan Rico, follows Edie (Adi Madden Cabrera) as a private Catholic school student on the outs of the cool crowd, trying to find her place in the world. It’s a tried and true story we’ve seen a lot of over the years, but Edie Arnold finds plenty of ways to stand out with lasting impressions. Edie and her best friend Frances (McKenna Tuckett) play drums and organ, respectively, for their school choir and during Sunday Mass, and have a passion for music. After spontaneously drumming for a band during a sold-out show, Edie and Frances form a band with a couple of other friends to capitalize on this momentum.

Edie is a strong-willed, independent girl raised by an overbearing mother (Cherish Rodriguez) who’s more interested in who Edie is hanging out with than she is with her own daughter. While it isn’t the focal point of the film, I found their relationship incredibly compelling. Growing up in a small town in Tennessee allowed me to see a lot of similar parents to Luanne Arnold, parents who weren’t quite what they wanted to be, so they pushed those expectations on their high school children. It’s a powerful through line in the film and certainly motivates Edie’s actions at every turn.”

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“To be a weirdo or a loser in high school doesn’t feel so bad when you’re surrounded by people who profoundly get you. As silly as the colloquial phrase “find someone who matches your freak” sounds, there’s immense truth to it. Especially when it comes to the high school years, when it’s so easy to feel like an outcast. If there’s one other person who gets you, that’s all you really need. In Megan Rico and Kade Atwood’s SXSW-premiering Edie Arnold Is a Loser, they’ve created a Catholic, punk rock love letter to the fellow weirdos who make life less lonely.

As the title quite heavily implies, Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) isn’t what you would call a popular kid. She’s moody, goofy, and uninhibited in a way that goes against pretty much all that all-girls Catholic schools stand for. Her best friend is Frances (McKenna Tuckett), a fellow loner, but the two don’t ever seem like they want to be somewhere else. They love the odd little friendship they have and goof off at every chance they get. They’re accompanists for the choir, and it’s there that they hatch a plan to start a punk band. Edie on drums, Frances on vocals and keys. Nothing more punk rock than screamo versions of hymns, right?”

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“First films are not barometers by which all subsequent films must account, but they play a massive role in the expectations audiences create. If a first film is a massive hit, the sophomore outing can’t be anything less than that. If a first film doesn’t make an impression, the bar is significantly lower. It’s with great sadness to report that the first feature-length directorial project for co-directors Kade Atwood (Studio C) and Megan Rico (Studio C) is such an unapologetic, punk-rock explosion of awesomeness from start to finish that any follow-up may have to involve actual devil worship to make it any more rock ‘n‘ roll. Having its world premiere in the Competition section of SXSW Film & TV Festival 2026, their Edie Arnold is a Loser reads like a basic self-empowerment teen comedy with a music bend, but it’s so much more as it never reduces itself to YA tropes as it blasts its audience in 4/4 time with abrupt honesty and unabashed hilarity.”

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“Edie Arnold is a Loser is a fun, feminist coming-of-age comedy that completely charmed the hell out of me when it screened at SXSW. The film follows the titular Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) and her best friend Frances (McKenna Tuckett), two Catholic schoolgirls who, after attending their first punk show, decide to start a band with classmates called the Nun Dead—get it? Edie isn’t exactly popular, but when a hunky altar boy asks her out after hearing her new band bonafides, her budding music career is thrown into chaos. Suddenly, she’s forced to confront some hard truths and choose between romance and creative self-expression.

Hilarious as it is wholesome, the film feels like Booksmart meets a gender-swapped, less toxic Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. The duo’s punk rock antics are punctuated by animated flourishes that let us peek inside their imaginations, while the rapid-fire editing channels the kinetic energy of peak Edgar Wright. At just over 70 minutes, the film moves like a three-chord ripper—breezy, poppy, and quietly empowering. It grants its heroines a kind of emotional courage most of us would’ve been lucky to muster at that age, even as they navigate some of adolescence’s messier realities.”

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“Playing percussion at Our Lady of Undying Sadness means a tap of the cymbals here, a twinkling of chimes there. But what Edie Arnold really wants—between mooning over the handsome altar boy—is to rock out to punk loud and proud.

Edie Arnold Is a Loser is a winningly quirky irreverent coming-of-age story. Premiering at the 2026 SXSW film festival, it covers some familiar ground as far as Catholic schoolgirl rebellion but punctuates it with snappy comedic timing, lively writing, and enjoyably endearing characters.

Edie (Adi Madden Cabrera) daydreams of punk greatness but in real life is the more subdued foil to her live-wire, orthodontics-brace-wearing friend Frances (McKenna Tuckett), who plays the organ during choir rehearsals and Mass while Edie handles the drums. Frances has spirit to spare, noting after the resident mean girl (Alana Mei Kern) braids unused tampons into Edie’s hair that she sparked this “fashion trend” first.”

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“Film festivals are rich terrain for brilliant cinematic discoveries, and among the finest and funkiest finds of SXSW 2026 is Edie Arnold is a Loser. The feature directorial debut of Megan Rico and Kade Atwood, this coming-of-age comedy is as hilarious as it is chaotic and devilishly iconoclastic. 

Like Juno, this fresh and funny film centers on a high school weirdo who treads an unconventional path to finding her bliss. Now, Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) is not getting preggo out of wedlock. Sure, the scowling nuns at her all-girls Catholic school consider Edie an underachieving delinquent, but she doesn’t drink, and celibacy is practically the only extracurricular activity she’s succeeding at — though not by choice. Like her classmates, she lusts after the only boy in their orbit, altar boy Walter Boyd (Lucas Van Orden), described by Edie’s friends as “like Jesus’s hotter younger brother, who was too hot to die.” But to him, she’s invisible… until she haphazardly starts a punk band called The Nundead.”

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“It’s not always the biggest hits that have staying power. Even a box office flop can leave a lasting mark — and for the team behind Edie Arnold Is a Loser, it was one of Chris Evans‘ most iconic misfires that did just that.

Wearing its Scott Pilgrim vs. the World inspiration on its sleeve, especially in its fast-paced, Edgar Wright-style editing, Edie Arnold Is a Loser leans into quick cuts, visual punchlines, and a heightened sense of reality that mirrors its characters’ chaotic energy, giving the comedy a rhythmic, almost musical flow.”

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