Okay, I ended up sifting through old prototypes to test this, and it works great. Solid backlight, smooth brightness transitions.
The project I tested was actually two of these displays with a single regulator driven by a teensy4. All the same...
IIRC it was smooth from very bright down to off.
I'm going to be pulling the project out of storage at some point soon-ish. When that happens I can report back.
@phiphi here you go: https://github.com/sndsgd/kicad-er-tft028a2-4
I think I might have one or two of the PCBs for this in my basement if you'd like me to send you one.