The director Sean Baker probably didn’t predict this outcome  while he was filming Anora, his latest small-budget indie project, in the snowy Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach—that a couple years later, he’d be accepting Best Picture at the Academy Awards. It was one of five prizes that his spiky indie dramedy collected on Hollywood’s biggest night. After a drawn-out awards season in which the biggest contenders seemed often in flux, Anora dominated at a fun if elongated Oscars ceremony.  This year’s Best Picture winner also took home Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing. Four of those trophies went to Baker, tying a record for individual wins in a night with the legendary Walt Disney; Anora’s young star Mikey Madison received the Best Actress trophy, in a fairly shocking upset over the widely tipped-to-win Demi Moore.

Anora is an unconventional Oscar juggernaut. As Baker reminded audiences from the stage, it’s a true indie picture, made for $6 million and with no huge names in the cast. But after  a triumphant debut at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the coveted Palme D’Or, Anora continued marching toward industry-wide recognition. The movie’s success is the culmination of a career that’s seen Baker making the most of shoestring budgets and filming whole movies on an iPhone. But Anora—which bested blockbuster heavyweights like Wicked and traditional awards fare like A Complete Unknown—was an especially incongruous winner this year, as it received its flowers during a notably old-school Academy Awards ceremony. This year’s show reminded me of the extravagant, zingy celebrations of cinema from my youth, with a highly competent host leading the viewer through nearly four hours of speeches, montages, and musical numbers.

[Read: The filmmaker who wants to wake us from the American dream]

Some might see the event’s duration as a problem. Indeed, concerns over the Oscars’ length have led to some strange truncations of the show in recent years. (Remember in 2022 when the producers cut some awards categories from the live broadcast, presenting them before it began?) This year reused the 2024 ceremony’s fairly ingenious solution to the runtime problem: Just start the whole shebang earlier. The live broadcast started at 4 p.m. in Los Angeles, which meant even the comparably roomy proceedings wrapped up during primetime on the east coast. And though some familiar causes of bloat, such as performances of each of the Best Song nominees, were absent, nature abhors a vacuum and this year’s showrunners found plenty of other superfluous moments to include.

To be clear: I think the excess is great. The Oscars should be long, indulgent, and for the fans; the ceremony happens once a year, and it should be staged at the same absurd scale as something like the Super Bowl. Any attempt to impose rigor and order on them tends to backfire in some unexpected way anyway. This year, the show’s 97th edition, there was very little tweaking to the proven formula. Conan O’Brien served as emcee, about as seasoned a choice imaginable for a first-time host, and he did exactly what an Oscar host is supposed to do: tell pithy jokes about the nominees, do a couple of silly, scripted bits, and otherwise keep things moving with a smile on his face. O’Brien has been a pro at that sort of thing since I was in elementary school.

The choice of O’Brien as host also set the expectation that this was probably not going to be a politically charged Oscars. The comedian’s brand is more focused on irreverence than commentary; he offered one glancing gag noting that Anora is about “standing up to a powerful Russian,” but little else in that vein.. He took a couple of cheerful swipes at the Best Actress nominee Karla Sofía Gascón over her past inflammatory tweets, but otherwise steered clear of Oscar politicking, too; this was not a night where it felt like an attendee might take the stage to slap a presenter. Instead, the tone was self-serious, yet still fun, as exemplified by musical numbers celebrating the leading ladies of Wicked, the recently deceased producer Quincy Jones, and the James Bond franchise.

[Read: Conan O’Brien understood the assignment]

These segments were conceptually loose—why was The Substance star Margaret Qualley suddenly onstage jerking her limbs to Paul McCartney’s Bond theme song “Live or Let Die”? I couldn’t really tell you, but the moment felt like the kind of forgettable, florid nonsense that graces even the most polished of Oscar ceremonies. Every year, the show’s producers try to think of new ways to celebrate movies, but the hoariest methods are usually best. There were some playful twists this year, however, such as performers addressing craft-award nominees directly to spotlight their work, or the stage opening up to reveal the orchestra playing the nominated scores.

But largely, Oscar night was pleasantly familiar, a respite after years of relatively chaotic ceremonies. This year’s event did have a little more pep to it than last year, when Oppenheimer swept the big awards, however. Several films picked up trophies: Behind Anora in number of wins was The Brutalist, which ended up taking three categories (Best Actor, Best Cinematography, and Best Score). Dune: Part Two and Wicked each earned two technical trophies, while Emilia Pérez, the nomination leader, won for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song. Emilia Pérez’s turnout in particular was a fall from seeming dominance, perhaps precipitated by Gascón’s controversy.

Or perhaps not. Anora reigned supreme at many of the guild awards that presage the Oscars, which tend to be the best predictors of these things. Despite the film’s offbeat subject matter—about a sex worker who impulsively marries a Russian oligarch’s son—and its screenplay filled with hectoring insults and curse words, Anora is a screwball romantic comedy at its heart. Its story clearly spoke to the widest swathe of voters, even if many pundits predicted that the tonier, more highfaluting adult drama Conclave would emerge as a consensus winner. (That film, about a Papal conclave gathering to select a new Pope, had to make do with a sole win for Adapted Screenplay.)

Baker, a chipper presence each time that he took the stage, passionately read from a piece of paper for his Best Director win. He argued for the primacy of the theatrical experience, a message that he’s been pushing throughout this awards season. Intentionally or not, the show around him was doing the same, harkening back to an older Oscars vibe—before streaming cinema and shortened cinematic “windows” were a problem anyone in the audience had to deal with. Anora is currently one of the lowest-grossing Best Picture winners ever, but its $15 million domestic gross is a relative success for such a small-scale work in this day and age. Baker’s hope, which is one I share, is that his Oscar success will spur studios to re-evaluate the importance of both the moviegoing experience and art that reaches beyond big-budget homogeny. The Oscars, amidst all their silliness, remain one of the best ways  to get people watching interesting films of all sizes.

As soon as Conan O’Brien strode onto the Oscars stage Sunday night, he looked like he belonged there. He was self-deprecating, telling the crowd to sit down before he continued, even though no one was standing. He found Demi Moore in the audience and greeted her with a grin; he had just played a pre-recorded clip of himself emerging out of her back as a nod to her work in the Best Picture-nominated body horror film The Substance. He took several steps across the set and quipped, “I’m walking to show I have control of the stage.”

He really did have control. O’Brien has never hosted the Academy Awards before, but the comedian seemed like a veteran of the gig as he kicked off the show. That’s in part because he spent three decades working in late-night television—writing bits, interviewing celebrities, and commanding all kinds of audiences as a host. As the writer Vikram Murthi observed last year, O’Brien “is one of our last classic entertainers.”

But O’Brien’s success at the Oscars is also a result of his ability to balance the silly with the serious; every now and then, he even embodied both at the same time. His tonal agility as a performer made him well-suited to a ceremony that came on the heels of two major events—the presidential election and the wildfires in Los Angeles that destroyed entire neighborhoods—while Hollywood itself has been enduring a tricky time: Studio productions have largely vacated Los Angeles after the pandemic and the dual strikes, streaming platforms continue to disrupt the traditional theater business, and a series of scandals have plagued several of the nominees seated inside the Dolby Theater. O’Brien has been going through a rough few months, too; his parents died within days of one another in December, and he evacuated his home amid the fires. His job, on top of charming both the A-listers in the room and those watching at home, requires knowing when and how to make his audience not only laugh, but also listen.

He proved adept at the task from the jump. In some moments during his monologue, he played the role of the conventional Oscars emcee: He encouraged the crowd to applaud Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, the stars of Wicked, for their performances at the  beginning of the show. He poked light fun at the Best Picture nominees, and teased some of the assembled actors by showing their pre-fame headshots. (The image shown for Timothée Chalamet, for instance, was that of a sonogram.)

Yet he also played the unruly jester: He championed Babygirl, a 2024 film that was snubbed by the Academy, and skewered Amazon’s recent purchase of the James Bond franchise. He also deployed several harsh punchlines about the actor Karla Sofía Gascón, whose resurfaced tweets—a series of bigoted missives, including one about the Oscars themselves—essentially sank her Best Actress campaign. After the crowd gasped at his reference to Gascón, O’Brien seemed delighted, pointing at the audience, rubbing his hands together, and even jogging in place. “I’m having fun,” he said, smiling impishly.

O’Brien’s giddiness was key to his opening act. It softened the strangeness of some of his gags, whether it was verbally sparring with his longtime friend Adam Sandler, requesting the Conclave star John Lithgow’s help to shame speech-givers into wrapping up, or performing an ironic song-and-dance number about not wasting time onstage the way that previous hosts and presenters have. These moments aren’t new to awards shows; Sandler has become a pinch hitter for live TV lately, and practically every Oscars host calls out how long the ceremony runs. But O’Brien made plain how much he sought to entertain, to hold everyone’s attention at any cost.

Perhaps that’s why he successfully delivered the segment that others in his position would have tried to quickly gloss over: a serious, direct-to-camera appeal about the importance of filmmaking, especially during less-than-ideal times. “In moments such as this, any awards show can seem self-indulgent and superfluous,” he began, “but what I want to do is have us all remember why we gather here tonight. … Even in the face of terrible wildfires and divisive politics, the work, which is what this is about, the work continues, and next year, and for years to come, through trauma and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here.”

He paused. “I will not,” he said as the crowd began to laugh. “I am leaving Hollywood to run a bed and breakfast in Orlando, and I’d like to see you there.” It was classic Conan: goofy and ridiculous, but earnest in his excitement, too. He’d said in an interview last week that all he wanted out of the hosting gig was “to have fun onstage.” He clearly did. So did those off of it.

With last year’s slow-roll Oppenheimer sweep, the leading Oscar contenders seemed to have sewn up their wins long before the ceremony began. This edition of the Academy Awards has been quite the compelling scramble by comparison, as half a dozen movies have gained and lost supposed front-runner status over the past few months. A couple of smash hits at the box office (Wicked and Dune: Part Two) scored a clutch of nominations, while comparatively cult hits The Substance and Emilia Pérez have commanded their own factions of support. (Emilia Pérez’s chances at the big trophies appear to have slipped in recent weeks, however, because of external controversies.) But the real battle for Best Picture has been among a handful of well-received grown-up dramas, none of which has risen above the rest as the obvious pick: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, and Conclave.

The four movies do not feel like traditional Oscar favorites, though A Complete Unknown (a music biopic about Bob Dylan) and Conclave (a gossipy drama about the selection of a new pope) come closest. The Brutalist, an epic tale of a Hungarian architect struggling for artistic freedom in postwar America, is the kind of grand-scale drama that evokes past Best Picture winners such as The Godfather, but the film’s knotty subject matter and extended length have made it polarizing. Anora, meanwhile, has leapt into the driver’s seat just ahead of Sunday’s ceremony with some crucial award-season gains. The downside is that the shaggy romantic dramedy, about a sex worker’s turbulent love affair with a Russian oligarch’s kid, might be too raunchy for the average Academy voter’s tastes.

Keeping in mind the unusually diffuse nature of this year, here are my best guesses as to who will triumph in the eight most competitive categories at the 2025 Academy Awards—and who I believe deserves the accolades.

Best Actress

Nominees: Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here)

Although Madison fits a conventional Oscar-winning mold in this category—the ingénue coming into her own—this trophy is likely Moore’s to lose. Her performance in The Substance earned her the Best Actress prize at the Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Critics Choice Awards this year, three of the four biggest precursor ceremonies. (The other major event is the BAFTA Film Awards, handed out by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, which gave its nod to Madison.) Moore’s work in the gooey, extreme horror satire was lauded for both its bravery and its meta-narrative; the film comments on the brutality that aging actresses face in Hollywood, which is something that’s certainly affected Moore’s own career. Her heartfelt, proud speeches on the campaign trail have doubtless helped as well.

I think her biggest competition comes from Torres, whose subtle but devastating turn in the Brazilian historical drama I’m Still Here—as a woman whose husband was “disappeared” by the military dictatorship running the country—vaulted the movie to a surprise Best Picture nod. But Moore’s name recognition should carry her over the line.

Who Will Win: Demi Moore

Who Ought to Win: Fernanda Torres

Best Actor

Nominees: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)

Since The Brutalist’s release, Brody has been the front-runner for his intense work as the fictional architect László Tóth. It’s a comeback role of sorts for the onetime Best Actor winner, who has gone through major career ups and downs since his surprise win (for The Pianist) two decades ago. Brody is wonderful in the role and could easily take the award; still, I have wondered whether the fact that he already has an Oscar will work against him—repeat winners in this category are rare. That could leave space for Chalamet, who has received plaudits for his convincing Bob Dylan impersonation—including the SAG Award, in the last major ceremony before the Oscars—and is one of Hollywood’s most captivating young leading men.

I think every nominee in this category is very strong, but my personal pick is Stan. He delivered two wonderfully distinct performances in The Apprentice (as a younger Donald Trump) and A Different Man (a brilliantly surreal indie comedy) in 2024; he deservedly won the Golden Globe for the latter last month.

Who Will Win: Timothée Chalamet

Who Ought to Win: Sebastian Stan

Best Supporting Actress

Nominees: Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Ariana Grande (Wicked), Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez)

The Emilia Pérez blowback has largely focused on the social-media postings of its lead actress, Gascón. Meanwhile, her co-star Saldaña has been the predicted Supporting Actress winner since awards season began in earnest, and she’s never really lost momentum. Saldaña arguably had the most difficult role in the French-made, Spanish-language crime musical, anchoring much of its complex exposition; she’s also a well-known Hollywood figure who has appeared in some of the industry’s biggest franchises (Avatar, Marvel, and Star Trek).

I would love to see a career win for Rossellini (doing a lot with a little in Conclave), and I thought Grande handled the humor of her Wicked role with aplomb. I was most astonished by Barbaro’s work as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, however, which somehow met the impossible challenge of replicating the folk singer’s incredible voice and stage presence.

Who Will Win: Zoe Saldaña

Who Ought to Win: Monica Barbaro

Best Supporting Actor

Nominees: Yura Borisov (Anora), Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice)

This is another field where basically every nominee would be a deserving winner. Pearce, like Brody, is experiencing something of a career renaissance following his turn in The Brutalist; he plays the preening, villainous patron of Brody’s character. Norton played against type as the well-meaning Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown. Strong’s interpretation of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice was tragicomic and frightening stuff. Borisov, a Russian actor, was the standout of the great ensemble in Anora. But the award has belonged to Culkin since A Real Pain debuted at Sundance more than a year ago; his emotionally overwrought, acidly funny turn and voters’ carried-over appreciation for Succession have seen him scoop up every major trophy ahead of the Oscars.

Who Will Win: Kieran Culkin

Who Ought to Win: Guy Pearce? Jeremy Strong? Edward Norton? Take your pick!

Best Original Screenplay

Nominees: Sean Baker (Anora); Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold (The Brutalist); Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain); Moritz Binder, Alex David, and Tim Fehlbaum (September 5); Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)

This race seems to be a 50–50 split, based on which films have won this prize elsewhere. On the one hand, prognosticators have deemed Anora the Best Picture favorite, so it should pick up additional trophies on the way to the big one. (It’s up for six total at the Academy Awards; Editing is another category it could secure.) On the other hand, A Real Pain is the kind of smarty-pants, dialogue-heavy stuff that often wins for Screenplay; plus, it’s written by the film’s director and star, Jesse Eisenberg, who’s already a known Oscar quantity. I think A Real Pain will edge the win—but I don’t feel confident about it.

Who Will Win: A Real Pain

Who Ought to Win: Anora

Best Adapted Screenplay

Nominees: James Mangold and Jay Cocks (A Complete Unknown); Peter Straughan (Conclave); Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, and Nicolas Livecchi (Emilia Pérez); RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes (Nickel Boys); Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Clarence Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield (Sing Sing)

Unlike any of the films in its sister category, Conclave looks to have Adapted Screenplay in the bag. Straughan translated Robert Harris’s best seller into a tightly wound, effectively plotted little thriller that’s all in the dialogue. As a work of adaptation, it’s neat yet not particularly ambitious stuff, following the contours of the book closely. I’d be much more excited by recognition for Nickel Boys, which found an unconventional and bold way to bring the author Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel to the screen.

Who Will Win: Conclave

Who Ought to Win: Nickel Boys

Best Director

Nominees: Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)

The only question when it comes to Best Director is whether it’ll diverge from Best Picture—as is more and more common at the Oscars these days. It’s happened four times in the past 10 years. This year’s race is so tight—Corbet and Baker have both won at the other big events thus far—that I’ll cautiously predict a split, with Corbet’s maximalist approach triumphing here. I wouldn’t be stunned by Baker winning the Oscar, though; in fact, he has the chance to win four trophies total (Picture, Director, Screenplay and Editing). He’d be a solid choice for any of them.

Who Will Win: Brady Corbet

Who Ought to Win: Sean Baker

Best Picture

Nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, Wicked

At first, Emilia Pérez came across as the lead contender because it was the biggest nomination-getter. But swirling controversy, combined with its generally divisive status among critics and audiences, has taken it down a notch. Then, I figured The Brutalist told the kind of old-school story that would resonate most with voters; its distributor A24’s canny campaign also put it in theaters late in December, traditionally an awards-season sweet spot, and made it quite the hot ticket. In just the previous few weeks, though, Anora won a bunch of big trophies—from the Critics Choice Awards, the Producers Guild, and the Directors Guild—that seemingly marked it as the easy Academy favorite. A final wrinkle has now come late in the race: The dependable, likable Conclave won two significant trophies, the BAFTA for Best Film and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Ensemble, akin to “best movie” from that voting body. Could that film sneak in as the consensus pick ahead of the spikier material surrounding it? I’ll still pick Anora by a nose, but it’s a bet worth hedging.

The best movie of the year, of course, is RaMell Ross’s innovative, inventive, deeply empathetic Nickel Boys—which got two deserved nods. But the film might have kept some voters at a distance with its unusual storytelling approach, as its critical acclaim hasn’t helped it earn many prime honors.

Who Will Win: Anora

Who Ought to Win: Nickel Boys

Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Demi Moore and Timothée Chalamet were among the actors smiling for the camera.

Stars including Cynthia Erivo, Demi Moore, Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce were in their finest outfits.

Mikey Madison, Demi Moore and Ariana Grande are among the stars expected at the ceremony on Sunday.

The following contains spoilers for the films The Substance, The Last Showgirl, and Maria.

In the 1990s, Demi Moore became the kind of movie star whose off-screen activities made more headlines than her acting did: She formed one half of a celebrity power couple with the actor Bruce Willis, posed nude while pregnant on the cover of Vanity Fair, and prompted a bidding war between the producers of Striptease and G.I. Jane, resulting in her being crowned the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. Her fame, when contrasted with some of her forgettable films—The Butcher’s Wife, The Scarlet Letter—turned her into an easy punch line. As the New Yorker critic Anthony Lane sneered at the start of his review of the latter: “What is the point of Demi Moore?”

Look at Moore now. Since the writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Moore, who stars in the movie, has solidified her position as a serious awards contender for the first time in her career. The actor plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an aging celebrity who takes the titular elixir to produce a younger version of herself. What follows is an excessive and unsubtle display of body horror: After Elisabeth’s nubile clone, Sue (Margaret Qualley), bursts out of her spine, she quickly becomes a starlet who antagonizes Elisabeth. Moore is tremendous, imbuing Elisabeth with a haunting vulnerability as she injects herself again and again with a body- and soul-destroying concoction. On Sunday, the 62-year-old won a Golden Globe—her first—for her performance; she delivered the night’s best acceptance speech, eloquently reflecting on how her career has evolved. “Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress’ … that I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged [for them]—and I bought in,” she said, choking up. “That corroded me over time to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it, maybe I was complete, maybe I’ve done what I was supposed to do.” Now Moore is experiencing the classic comeback narrative: the Hollywood veteran reminding audiences that they’ve underrated her talent all along.

She’s one of several actors doing so this awards season, and with roles that explore how rapidly the entertainment industry can turn women into has-beens. In the Gia Coppola–directed The Last Showgirl, Pamela Anderson, 57, plays Shelly, a Las Vegas dancer left to confront her feeling of expendability when the revue she’s been in for decades is set to close. Throughout the intimate film, Shelly insists on her value, echoing Anderson’s own trajectory as someone whose work was never taken seriously. Meanwhile, Pablo Larraín’s gorgeously rendered biopic Maria stars the 49-year-old Angelina Jolie as the opera singer Maria Callas in her final days, struggling to repair her voice and maintain her composure. Jolie, like Callas, has endured an especially tricky relationship with the A-list; she’s been a tabloid mainstay in spite of her artistic ventures.

[Read: What is it about Pamela Anderson?]

Elisabeth, Shelly, Maria—all are women who can’t resist the spotlight despite its cruelty. The films about them interrogate the true price of their fame, exploring how their chosen field turns youth into an addiction. Films such as All About Eve, Death Becomes Her, and Sunset Boulevard have long proved the endurance of these themes. The Substance, The Last Showgirl, and Maria go further, however, exemplifying how this lifelong pursuit of beauty is also an act of constant self-deception. Fear, not vanity, animates each woman; losing their celebrity means losing their sense of worth. “It’s not about what’s being done to us,” Moore said of The Substance in an interview. “It’s what we do to ourselves.”

The actors who portray these characters have all coincidentally, and conversely, returned to the spotlight by embracing their age. Each has achieved a so-called career renaissance as a result. But such appreciation can be a double-edged sword: Anointing older female performers as “comebacks” concedes to, and maybe even reinforces, the rigid expectations Hollywood has placed on them. Of these three films, The Substance most clearly establishes that tension as something more than just tragic. The effort to retain an ingénue-like appeal, Fargeat’s fable posits, is both irresistible and preposterous.

The Substance almost immediately pushes the idea that the endless quest for beauty produces its own kind of overpowering high: After she emerges from Elisabeth’s back, Sue—housing Elisabeth’s consciousness—begins to examine her body in the mirror. She relishes her appearance, gazing at her face and running her hands over her smooth features; Elisabeth, meanwhile, clings to life, sprawled on the floor with her hair fanned out and her spine split open. Sue then auditions for the television executive who had just fired her older self. Never mind that the network callously discarded Elisabeth once she turned 50: Given the opportunity to be gorgeous and “perfect” once more, Sue heads straight for the gig that she knows cares about little beyond her looks.

Then again, this is the only life Sue knows. Her identity is rooted in Elisabeth’s experiences; Elisabeth believes that her value is her supposed flawlessness—a punishing worldview that neither she nor Sue can escape. The film’s most penetrating terror, then, is rooted not in the way Fargeat makes every mutilation squelchily gross, but in how Elisabeth and Sue sabotage themselves as a result of their insecurities. The pair are supposed to switch consciousnesses every seven days for the drug to work, but when Sue spends more time awake than she should, Elisabeth ages. The sight of her wrinkled skin repels her, and she responds with searing self-hatred, chastising herself by binge-eating. One especially chilling sequence doesn’t involve body horror at all: It just shows Elisabeth readying herself for a date, only to give up as soon as she catches the smallest glimpse of her reflection in a door handle.

The women in The Last Showgirl and Maria similarly cannot move past their fixation on the fame they enjoyed when they were younger. Shelly, the Las Vegas dancer, reaches out to her estranged daughter, only for the relationship to fall apart as Shelly insists on the importance of the revue. Jolie’s ailing Maria finds comfort in a dangerous sedative called Mandrax, which causes hallucinations of a journalist pressing her to discuss her legacy. The more these women attempt to figure out who they are beyond their profession, the more they fall back into old habits.

All three films also suggest that their protagonists find their twisted actions thrilling. Maria hides her pills from her household staff with the glee of a child stashing her Halloween candy. Shelly, unlike Elisabeth, makes it to a date with the revue’s stage manager, Eddie (Dave Bautista). She glams herself up in a slinky silver dress and a full face of makeup; as she sits down, she compliments Eddie, and then pauses. “Do I look nice?” she prompts him, grinning widely when he responds affirmatively. And when Elisabeth goes to pick up more boxes of the substance, she acts as if she’s carrying out a pulse-pounding robbery, darting into alleyways and glancing suspiciously at passersby. Keeping up appearances, in other words, delivers an adrenaline rush that justifies the never-ending chase for perfection and acclaim. “Being an artist is solitary, but if you’re passionate about it,” Shelly insists, “it’s worth it.”

[Read: Hollywood doesn’t know what to do with Angelina Jolie]

Still, as much as these characters may perpetuate their own pain, the movies aren’t seeking to condemn their choices. Instead, they scrutinize the consequences of a lifetime spent facing society’s insurmountable and fickle pressures. These women don’t seem to consider those who have wronged them to be their antagonists: Eddie is a sympathetic character despite having to close Shelly’s revue, Maria’s critics rarely faze her, and Sue continues to chase the approval of the network executive who fired Elisabeth. Rather, the women’s age and perceived attractiveness pose ever-present threats to their livelihood. The Substance captures this best; the camera leers at Sue and Elisabeth both, closing in on their hyper-sexualized bodies. The costumes are replete with garish hues. The production design transforms Los Angeles into a phantasmagoric nightmare from which Elisabeth cannot be roused—as herself or as Sue. Her only solution is to allow her burdens to consume her. Turning external pressures into brutal obsessions is a metamorphosis as visceral as that of a younger self bursting forth from your back.

In its high-concept outrageousness, The Substance lands on a catharsis that’s missing from The Last Showgirl and Maria. The two latter films end with a mournful—and frustratingly hollow—air of resignation: Shelly is seen performing in one of her last shows after enduring a humiliating audition for a new program, and Maria dies at home after a final hallucination, of an orchestra accompanying her while she sings an aria. The Substance’s conclusion is anything but elegiac, however. Sue, after killing Elisabeth during a violent showdown, takes the substance herself, even though the drug is supposed to work only on its original subject. Out of her spine emerges a creature with too many appendages, body parts in the wrong places, and Elisabeth’s face protruding from her back. Yet she—dubbed “Monstro Elisasue”—does what Sue did when she was “born.” She admires herself in the mirror. She primps and preens. As she gets dressed, she even pokes an earring into a strip of flesh.

Yet as soon as Monstro Elisasue steps onstage, she repulses her audience. They gawk, and then they scream, and then, drenched in the blood that starts spewing from her body, they run. It’s an utterly ludicrous ending—and a liberating one. Only Elisabeth’s face remains as Monstro Elisasue stumbles out onto the streets of Los Angeles and melts into a bloody mess. She leaves with the last laugh, cackling as she pauses over her star on the Walk of Fame. And Moore, in those frames, is transcendent, her expression ecstatic and maniacal and unhinged. What is the point of Demi Moore? Perhaps it’s to reveal how sophomoric such questions were in the first place.

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Americans are spending more and more time alone. Some are lonely. But many people—young men in particular—are actively choosing to spend much of their time in isolation, in front of screens. That proclivity is having a profound effect on individual well-being and on American’s “civic and psychic identity,” my colleague Derek Thompson writes in our new cover story. I spoke with Derek about what he calls our anti-social century.

Lora Kelley: The pandemic was obviously very disruptive to people’s social lives. How much is it to blame for this trend toward aloneness?

Derek Thompson: I never would have written this story if the data showed that Americans were hanging out and socializing more and more with every passing year and decade—until the pandemic happened, and we went inside of our homes, and now we’re just slowly getting back out. That’s not a story about America. That’s a story about a health emergency causing people to retreat from the physical world.

The anti-social century is the opposite of that story. Every single demographic of Americans now spends significantly less time socializing than they did at the beginning of the 21st century, when some people already thought we were in a socializing crisis. Overall, Americans spend about 20 percent less time socializing than they did at the beginning of the century. For teenagers and for young Black men, it’s closer to 40 percent less time. This trend seems, by some accounts, to have accelerated during the pandemic. But as one economist pointed out to me, we were more alone in 2023 than we were in 2021.

Lora: We’ve talked a bit about shifts in isolation for young people. Where do older Americans fit into this? Are we seeing similar dynamics play out for that cohort?

Derek: Aloneness is rising across the board—for every age group and for every ethnicity and for every type of education—but it’s rising slower for old people and faster for young people.

Older people have always spent more time alone than young people. They don’t go to school from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; they’re not legally forced to be around people the same way that many young people are. They aren’t in college, and they are often unemployed, so they aren’t in offices.

The solitude inequality that used to exist between different age groups—where old people were very alone, and young people were very social—is shrinking. You could say young people are acting more like old people.

Lora: What would you say to someone who thinks: Well, what’s wrong with spending time alone? If people are doing what they want to do, and pursuing their idea of a good life, why not spend more time in the house?

Derek: I don’t want this article to be a criticism of introversion, and I certainly don’t want this article to be a criticism of quiet. I myself am somewhat introverted and love a bit of quiet time. But what’s happening in America today is not a healthy trend of people simply spending more time being happy by themselves. Many researchers who looked at the rise of alone time have come to the conclusion that Americans self-report less satisfaction when they spend lots of time alone or in their house.

I think a certain amount of alone time is not only acceptable; it’s absolutely essential. But as with any therapeutic, the dosage matters, and people who spend a little bit of time taking moments by themselves, meditating, or decompressing are very different from people who are spending more hours, year after year, isolated.

Lora: To what extent is the rise of isolated lifestyles an individual issue—one that’s concerning because it’s making people sadder—versus a civic issue that’s causing a shift in American politics?

Derek: This pullback from public life started with technology, with cars and television, and ultimately smartphones, allowing Americans to privatize their leisure. But I absolutely think it’s becoming a political story.

I think we don’t understand one another for a reason that’s mathematical, almost tautological: Americans understand Americans less because we see Americans less. More and more, the way we confront people we don’t know is on social media, and we present an entirely different face online—one that tends to be more extreme and more negative and more hateful of the “out” group. I don’t think there should be any confusion about why an anti-social century has coincided with a polarized century.

Lora: You write in your article that “nothing has proved as adept at inscribing ritual into our calendars as faith.” How do you think about the way that so many Americans use technology—things like phone reminders and calendar tools and self-improvement apps—to inscribe rituals into their personal routines?

Derek: We haven’t just privatized leisure. We’ve privatized ritual. Modern rituals are more likely to bind us to ourselves than to other people: Meditate at this time alone. Remember to work out alone, or around other people with noise-canceling headphones.

It’s profoundly ironic that a lot of people are optimizing themselves toward solitude. The anti-social century is about accretion. It’s about many small decisions that we make minute to minute and hour to hour in our life, leading to a massive national trend of steadily rising overall aloneness.

Related:

February cover story: The anti-social century Why Americans suddenly stopped hanging out

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Winners included Demi Moore, Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist and Wicked, while Baby Reindeer and Shōgun won the big TV prizes.