Predator: The Badlands

Having watched this movie, you may have missed the deeper lesson that it teaches us.

In the 2025 film Predator: The Badlands, we meet Dek. His story offers an unexpected but powerful illustration of some of the core ideas behind Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

Dek grows up in a deeply invalidating environment. Although he has a supportive brother, his father sees him as weak and useless. In fact, his father goes so far as to order Dek’s brother to kill him. The brother refuses—but in defending Dek, he is killed by their father.

From that moment on, Dek carries a heavy burden: the need to prove that he is worthy.

Among Predators, acceptance into the tribe requires a dangerous rite of passage—hunting and killing an “apex predator.” Dek travels to Genna on a quest to kill the feared Kalisk, hoping that this achievement will finally earn his father’s approval and restore his honour.

When Dek arrives on this new world as a lone warrior, he carries with him his struggle.

He is driven by the belief that he must prove he is not a failure. He is fused with the story his father told about him. When we watch Dek in the early part of the film, everything is framed as a battle for survival. His world is narrow, tense, and hostile.

In ACT terms, Dek is hooked.

When we are fused with painful stories about ourselves—I am not good enough, I have to prove myself, I am a failure—our attention narrows. We become hyper-focused on threats, criticism, and danger. We lose sight of possibilities. Even when resources and opportunities are around us, we cannot see them.

Dek experiences exactly this.

Things begin to change only when he meets Thea and Bud. Through these relationships, Dek slowly begins to loosen his grip on the struggle he has been carrying. His quest shifts.

At first, the mission was about honour and validation from his father.

But over time, Dek’s values evolve. His focus becomes protecting his friends and helping Bud’s mother—who we initially believed to be the “big bad.”

In that moment, Dek’s actions are no longer driven by the need to prove himself. They are guided by what matters. And something remarkable happens.

Once he stops struggling so hard with the story about who he is supposed to be, his perspective widens. Suddenly he can see the tools and possibilities around him—things that had been there all along. His environment transforms from a battlefield into a landscape of opportunity.

This is one of the core lessons of ACT.

When we are locked in struggle—whether with pain, grief, trauma, or the need for validation—our world becomes smaller. Our attention narrows to what is wrong, what is threatening, or what we are trying to escape.

But when we begin to loosen our grip on that struggle, even slightly, something shifts.

We start to notice new opportunities, new connections. And we can start moving forward.

Dek’s story reminds us of something important: when we stop organising our lives around proving ourselves or escaping our trauma story, we create space to organise our lives around our values instead.

And sometimes, along the way, we discover something else. We discover that family is not always the one we are born into.  We may even end up making new family. Family that supports us and cares for us and fights for us. Even in the most unexpected places.

By Dr Michelle Beukes-King