There are audiences for movies that amuse us, and arouse us, and scare us, but the career of Todd Solondz ("Storytelling") raises the question: Is there an audience for movies that make us feel icky?

Solondz's most richly icky flick was "Happiness" (1998), which rung both blood-dark comedy and milky pathos from pedophilia. "Life During Wartime" is a sequel to "Happiness," but you wouldn't know it from the cast, which is different.

The most glaring example of looking-glass casting is that Allen, the pasty-faced obscene caller played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Happiness," is now played by African-American actor Michael Kenneth Williams. As the sequel opens, Allen is pleading to save his marriage to Joy (Shirley Henderson). Instead, she flees New Jersey for Florida, where she's haunted by the ghost of her short-lived suitor Andy (Paul Reubens) and clumsily comforted by her sister Trish (Allison Janney).

Trish has issues of her own. Just as she's falling in love with a presumably normal schlub (Michael Lerner), her sensitive son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder) is asking questions about the mechanics of molestation, and her ex-husband, Bill (Ciaran Hinds), is paroled from his prison sentence for sodomy.

Bill travels to Florida to make amends with his older son, Billy (Chris Marquette), but en route he's ensnared by a grim widow (Charlotte Rampling) who needs a warm body in her cold hotel room.

The original title of the script was "Forgiveness," but there's no room for either peacemaking or wartime social consciousness in this claustrophobic film. The characters are too neurotic or narcissistic to connect with each other, let alone us, and because several of them are played by Brits speaking in American accents, there's an added layer of artifice.

In "Happiness," the strangeness of Solondz's milieu seemed truthful. The daring director is still a fascinating craftsman, but now we don't feel welcome in his dollhouse.