Why Does My Zoom In Hook Around Like This?

[KevinAmp]

https://gfycat.com/SpotlessDistantAmericanwigeon

I've been following After Effects Apprentice and Chris talks about using Anchor Point and Scale to Zoom in on on stuff and make fake camera movements instead of using position and scale. However. It does this odd "hook" behavior. When I use position this is not a problem. Any reasons for this?

[Roei Tzoref]

See that You use the anchor point shifting with parameter scrubbing in the timeline or in the layer window with the selection tool shifting the anchor point and NOT with the anchor point tool (shortcut Y) in the composition window.

While this anchor+scale is a nice approach for creating pan and zoom (aka "ken burns effect") I would also recommend another approach which is setting your layer to 3D and using only the position to place it anywhere you need in the frame in relation to default Ae Camera. if you need more control, you can add a camera, like this:
Pan And Zoom Along A Curve

[KevinAmp]

I tried what you said in the first part. That just gave me the same result as what I was doing before which was, originally just using the selection tool in the comp layer and not the anchor point tool. Should I just give up on this all together?

[Szalam]

What happens if you use the keyframe assistant and apply the Exponential Scale?

[Rick Gerard]

The easiest way to diagnose the problem is to select the layer or layers that are giving you problems and then press the U key twice. Make sure that show all keyframes is selected in your Preferences, and then look at the path in the comp panel and the graph editor. If you are animating the anchor point then you can see the anchor point path by selecting the layer, opening the layer in the Layer Panel (right click if double click doesn't work) then choose Anchor Point Path in the view options at the bottom right corner of the layer panel. You'll probably see something like this:

More than half of learning to use After Effects is learning how to understand what you are seeing in the UI, where things are, and then getting enough experience to know which knobs to turn.

[Szalam]

It looks to me like the anchor point or position keyframes aren't linear, but the scale keyframes are. If you select all of your keyframes, right-click, and choose keyframe interpolation and set them all to linear, does it go away?

[KevinAmp]

No it doesnt

[Roei Tzoref]

if as S suggested, you set the spatial interpolation to linear and still have this issue, please share your project file (no need for assets) so we can examine it.