David Charbonier and Justin Powell’s debut The Boy Behind the Door was a well-executed abduction horror scored through with both tenderness and an uncommon cruel streak. Their follow-up, The Djinn, stars one of that film’s lead actors, Ezra Dewey, and locks him once again into the same kids-in-confinement genre. Despite light 80s stylings on the soundtrack, this is unfortunately a much weaker effort that both lacks internal logic and struggles for inspiration.

Dewey plays Dylan, a mute boy living with single father Michael (Rob Brownstein), who believes his disability has caused his mother’s absence from their life. So one night, when Michael is out doing his radio DJ gig, Dylan – who earlier found occultist tome the Book of Shadows at the back of a closet – lets three drops of his blood fall into a candle and into the black flame makes his most fervent wish: to have a voice. Only he doesn’t pay enough attention to the small print: that to receive the boon, he must survive one hour in close quarters with the djinn granting it.

Probably for budgetary reasons that mean CGI and practical FX shots have to be strictly rationed, this fire spirit manifests mostly in human form; swirling as black vapour over newspaper obituaries and old portraits to hoover up the likenesses of the dead. Unfortunately, that means a supposedly omnipotent supernatural entity resorts to hilariously bathetic means to take Dylan’s soul, such as rigging up a bit of piping to gas him in the bathroom. Netherworld denizens apparently watch YouTube DIY tutorials too.

Charbonier and Powell like moving through the apartment in Steadicam but this results in a soupy style that seeks to cover for the lack of positional imagination and rigour in the script. Dylan’s asthma inhaler works overtime as a tension-inducing MacGuffin, while a subplot about his stricken mother feels equally contrived. It feels like a lockdown project that needed exposing to a bit more outside air.

• The Djinn is out in cinemas on 17 September.