In 1944, in the midst of World War II, two fighter pilots – American pilot Hank Marlow and Japanese pilot Gunpei Ikari – parachute onto an island in the South Pacific after a dogfight and engage in close combat, but the fight is interrupted by a behemoth ape that appears.
Twenty-nine years later, in 1973, U.S. government agent Bill Randa hires former British Special Air Service Captain James Conrad, a skilled tracker, to guide an expedition to map out a recently discovered island known as Skull Island. Their military escort is the Sky Devils, a Vietnam War helicopter squadron led by Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard and his subordinates, Major Jack Chapman and Captain Earl Cole. The group is joined by pacifist photojournalist Mason Weaver, who believes the expedition is a secret military operation. Upon arrival at Skull Island, Packard's men begin dropping explosives developed by seismologist Houston Brooks to map out the island. However, the air unit is attacked by the same ape from 1944, who kills a number of military personnel and scatters the survivors across the island.
Packard regroups with some of the scattered survivors, including his door gunner Reles, pilot Glenn Mills, Cole, Landsat employee Steve Woodward, and Randa. After being confronted by Packard, Randa reveals his affiliation to the secret government organization Monarch, and using the expedition to prove the existence of monsters and determine their threat to humanity. Packard's group begins making their way to Chapman, whose helicopter crash-landed elsewhere, while the other group of survivors (Conrad, Weaver, Brooks, biologist San Lin, soldier Reg Slivko, and Landsat employee Victor Nieves) try to get to a rendezvous point to meet a resupply team arriving in three days' time, as all the survivors have various encounters with the island's creatures. Conrad's group encounter the local Iwi natives and an older Marlow. He reveals that the ape is Kong, the island's guardian, worshiped as a god by the natives for protecting them from many predators, including reptilian underground monsters dubbed "Skullcrawlers". He informs them that Kong attacked and destroyed the air unit because their seismology explosives brought Skullcrawlers to the surface, and they are responsible for killing Kong's ancestors, leaving him as the last of his kind. He also tells them he and Ikari became friends, but Ikari was killed by a Skullcrawler some time ago.
Chapman is ambushed and eaten by a Skullcrawler, while Conrad's group helps Marlow complete a boat built from parts scavenged from Marlow and Ikari's downed planes. They ride the boat down the river, and manage to secure communication with Packard's group, but the boat is attacked by pterosaur-like creatures which kill Nieves. They regroup with Packard, who insists on searching for Chapman, though his true objective is to find and kill Kong, who he perceives as an enemy due to killing his men.
Marlow leads the two groups to a mass grave littered with the bones of Kong's kin. There, the same Skullcrawler that killed Chapman attacks the group, killing Randa and many soldiers before dying in a flammable gas explosion triggered by Weaver. Learning about Chapman's death, a vengeful Packard blames Kong for the deaths of his men and becomes even more determined to kill him. The two groups part ways, with Packard's group laying a trap for Kong at a nearby lake, while the non-military personnel head back to the boat. While scouting the path ahead, Conrad and Weaver encounter Kong up-close and, seeing his true benevolent nature, they resolve to save him.
As Conrad and Weaver encounter Kong, Packard's group uses the remaining seismic explosives to lure him in. Kong charges to the lake, where they incapacitate him with ignited napalm, though Woodward is killed. Conrad, Weaver and Marlow arrive and persuade the other soldiers to spare Kong, but Packard refuses to stand down. A massive Skullcrawler emerges from the lake and Packard is crushed to death by a recovering Kong. The Skullcrawler overpowers Kong and chases the humans. Cole is killed in a failed suicide bomb attempt to kill it, but Kong returns to rescue the others and battle the beast, and is aided by the survivors. Weaver is knocked into the marsh during the fight but Kong saves her from drowning. The Skullcrawler then tries to kill Kong and eat Weaver, but Kong successfully kills it by ripping out its innards, and allows the survivors to leave the island.
During the credits, Marlow returns home, reuniting with his wife, meeting his son for the first time, and watching a Chicago Cubs game on television.
In the mid-credits, Conrad and Weaver are detained by Monarch. They are informed by Brooks and San that Skull Island is just the beginning and that Kong is not the only monster king to roam the world. As proof, they are shown archive footage of cave paintings depicting Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah.
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