Like 50 Shades of Grey, which was spawned by fan fiction inspired by the Twilight books and movies, the After series of books and movies was spawned by online fan fiction hopelessly devoted to One Direction and the boy band's breakout star, Harry Styles.

Unfortunately, the latest instalment in the series, After Ever Happy, features a leading man largely devoid of Harry's style and a desultory plot line that has no direction.

Welcome to 50 Shades of Meh, a pretty-to-look-at, perfectly anodyne, utterly unremarkable young-love story now spinning through its fourth film in what the producers say have recently announced will be a seven-episode arc.

Yes, seven films. All for what feels worth barely one episode of The Bold and the Beautiful.

The series follows the on-again, off-again romance of moody, messed-up and lightly tattooed bad boy Brit Hardin (played by Hero Fiennes Tiffin) and golden-haired, dewy-eyed all-American sweetheart Tessa (Australia's Josephine Langford).

Picking up directly from the end of the last movie (there's essentially a TV-style "previously on ..." recap during the opening credits), surly Hardin is wrestling with the discovery that the long-time family friend he's just caught bonking his mother before her marriage to someone else is actually his secret biological father.

Haughty Hardin leans hard into his self-absorption, swigging on an expensive-looking bottle of whisky, howling at the night sky, punching walls and setting fire to his childhood home. As you do.

In his misery Hardin pushes Tessa away. Will they find their way back to each other? Will they kiss and make up in a soft-focus, carefully coy, utterly unerotic sex scene?

Soon more daddy issues arise: the overdose death of Tessa's father.

In her misery Tessa pushes Hardin away. Will they find their way back to each other? Will they kiss and make up in a soft-focus, carefully coy, utterly unerotic sex scene?

And so the break-up and make-up cycle continues, as this self-infatuated duo spiral their way through pouty tantrums and shouty quarrels back into one of those high-gloss, heavy breathing clinches.

"Please don't push me away." "I feel like I'm drowning." "I'm sorry I couldn't fix you."

There are sunny flashbacks to happier interludes from earlier movies, references to Hemingway for full lit cred and surges of synthetic strings and generic pop on the soundtrack at Big. Dramatic. Moments.

Former soap star Rob Estes plays Hardin's dad and American Beauty's Mira Sorvino is Tessa's mother.

Other actors apparently played these key supporting roles in previous After movies, which goes to show just how artificial and lacking in art or heart this fan-driven franchise - fan-chise? - is.

The Hardin character, for example, could have been totally Heathcliff broody and everything but Fiennes has nothing to work with, script or charisma wise.

Meanwhile Langford brings the bland. Their never-ending loop of spats followed by nearly naked writhing in heavily tricked up extreme close-up is beyond tedious.

At the screening I attended there were some audible groans when the inevitable "to be continued ..." flashed up on the screen.

For these devotees perhaps it was heartbreak or perhaps it was the realisation that they are still one or possibly three more movie-length toxic lust spirals away from The End.

After Ever Happy follows on from After (2019), After We Collided (2020) and After We Fell (2021) and next up we are told is After Everything.

While that might be the end of the main saga, there are reportedly two spin-offs in the works: a prequel called Before loosely based on the Anna Todd book of the same name, which explores Hardin's past; and a next-generation sequel, which the internet says will follow the children of Hardin and Tessa.

Which I guess answers the will they or won't they question. Spoiler alert.