[4] The film stars Lucas Till, Jane Levy, Amy Ryan, Rob Lowe, Danny Glover, Barry Pepper, Thomas Lennon, and Holt McCallany, and follows Tripp Coley, a young junkyard employee who finds a subterranean creature living in his truck.

[5][6][7] Terravex Oil is in the midst of a fracking operation in North Dakota, overseen by CEO Reece Tenneson and geologist Jim Dowd.

Meanwhile, Tenneson is still concerned about the incident at the drilling rig, since similar experiments have revealed the existence of other creatures.

He decides to protect the company's image by drilling poison into a hole leading to the underwater tunnels, and by sending hired mercenary Burke to kill their captured creatures, to the objection of Dowd, as he finds the monsters have significant intelligence and emotions, as well as a hive mind intelligence that allows both of the captured specimens to learn what was taught to one.

They escape by jumping over a MRL local with an EMD MP15DC lead train, and camping at a hunting cabin.

At the dealership, the creatures take control of the modified trucks, and the group make their escape up the mountain leading to the tunnels.

Creech saves Tripp from drowning before he and his parents depart back home where the others of their kind are, and Terravex is exposed by the group for the experimentation that was harming the creatures' habitat.

[12] On April 24, Tucker Albrizzi, who starred in Nickelodeon's TV show Big Time Rush, joined the cast,[16] with Rob Lowe added five days later.

It was initially set for May 29, 2015,[26][27][28] but on January 26, 2015, the film was pushed back to December 25, 2015, a date first assigned for Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

[31] On September 21, 2016, The Hollywood Reporter stated Paramount would take a $115 million writedown on the film because of its expected poor performance at the box office.

[3] In North America, Monster Trucks was released alongside the openings of The Bye Bye Man and Sleepless, as well as the wide releases of Silence, Patriots Day and Live by Night, and was expected to gross $8–10 million from 3,119 theaters in its opening weekend.

[36] Due to its $125 million budget, as well as additional amounts spent on promotion, the film was considered by analysts to be a box-office bomb.

Kristy Puchko cited it as a "treasure that feels like a heady relic from the '90s" in IndieWire's 2017 critic's survey of the Craziest Hollywood Movies of the 21st Century,[40] while Sean Egan called it a "live-action cartoon that recalls the goofy, good-hearted Amblin family films of yore" in AM New York Metro's Best Films of 2017 list.