Makes little sense

In Twilight Zone's A Most Unusual Camera, the logic is tight and minimalistic: the camera can be picked up, taken anywhere, pointed anywhere, and it takes pics 10 minutes into the future of whatever you pointed it at. So it made sense in that episode that they point it at the results board at the horse track 10 minutes before the real results appear, so they win. They did not feel the need to point the camera AGAIN at the results board in "real time" to ensure their results. This 30 minute episode in 1960 was less ambitious, yet tighter and more logically consistent in its sci-fi scope, than this mess of a movie.

In this movie, the Twilight Zone equivalent would be putting a newspaper or a TV screen with winning lotto numbers in front of the camera at 8pm, letting the picture snap, and immediately seeing the winning numbers. Instead, the film is convoluted, by having Jasper looking at a future photo of the winning dogs which HE wrote down and placed in front of the camera. But this does not really work, because the source of his prediction is the PHOTO itself of his handwritten notes, not an actual objective external source like a newspaper or TV. The difference is that the TV, newspaper or racing board is (a) not conscious of being photographed as if it were the future,and thus cannot alter anything about the results or fail to produce the results, as the housemates lived in fear of and became slaves thereby; and (b) the TV/newspaper use sources directly from the objective external events themselves. Here, Jasper is very conscious that he is being photographed for the future, and much of the film is concerned with not "messing it up". Also, he gets the winning results not from the external events, but from the photos themselves, in an endless paradoxical loop. For example, where did the first photo of Jasper and his winning dog results come from? If you say "the future", then this means he was in the future, writing down the winning dogs from.... another PHOTO...get it? Worse, the film is complicated by the absurd idea (introduced as sort of a lame "butterfly effect" explanation) that the housemates believe they must " pose" for a photo that, at the time of its shooting, is not taking their photo anyway, but of the window 24 hours later! So that "click" at 8pm is not even taking their picture, which they are posing so hard for! So it makes no sense that they would work so hard preparing all day (and becoming willing slaves thereby) to prepare to get their picture taken by a camera that has already taken their picture the day before.

I know some people will claim that these "paradoxes" are what make the movie good, but actually I think they were not explained very well, and none of the characters even brought these logical issues up. They could have explored how copying the winning dogs off a photo taken the night before and pasting it on the window the next night and posing with it--actually gets you anywhere. But they didn't, and I thought it was just sloppy. Instead, they went with a much dumber storyline involving an unconvincing bookie/thug angle (which also made no sense, since the bookie was making bank on Jasper's bets, getting a cut), as well as the absurd "love story" between Callie and Finn, and her final derangement.