How Does Netflix’s ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ Connect to the Original?

Warning: This article contains major Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) spoilers.

Slasher nerds, this weekend is your time to shine, because there is a brand new Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie now streaming on Netflix.

The ninth installment of this horror franchise—which is titled simply Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for maximum consumer confusion—comes from director David Blue Garcia, with a screenplay from Chris Thomas Devlin. Actor Mark Burnham steps into the iconic human-skin mask to play Leatherface, while actors Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher, and Jacob Latimore round out the group of young people who are unlucky enough to be the target of Leatherface’s murderous rampage.

The new 2022 movie is considered a direct sequel to that original film, which means the seven Texas Chainsaw movies that came out between 1974 and 2022 are not considered canon, for the purpose of this movie. That’s good news for viewers, who won’t need to worry about catching up on all eight movies in order to fully appreciate the new one. That said, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) does tie into The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Here’s how.

WHEN DOES THE NEW TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE MOVIE TAKE PLACE?

The 2022 Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place in the present-day, almost fifty years after the chainsaw-wielding murderer known as Leatherface brutally slaughtered a group of teens on a road trip, who made the mistake of picking up a hitchhiker in the 1974 film, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

What has Leatherface been up to for the past 50 years, then? Well, according to this new movie, after the events of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Leatherface went to live at an orphanage in Harlow, Texas. He formed a close bond with the woman who owned the orphanage and considered her a surrogate mother. By the time the main characters of the new Texas Chainsaw movie arrive in Harlow, Leatherface is the old woman’s last remaining tenant.

In an interview for the 2022 Texas Chainsaw press notes, director David Blue Garcia said, “Because Leatherface didn’t have his family negatively influencing him, he was living a quiet life of solitude. That only becomes interrupted once these young entrepreneurs come to town, and set off a chain of events that brings him back to his past. Times have changed a lot in 50 years, but Leatherface deep down inside hasn’t.”

HOW IS TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2022 CONNECTED TO THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 1974?

The big connection between the 2022 Texas Chainsaw and the 1974 movie—other than the return of Leatherface as the antagonist, of course—is the return of Sally Hardesty, the protagonist of the original film who was the sole survivor of Leatherface’s 1974 rampage. In the first film, Sally was played by Marilyn Burns, but because Burns died in 2014, the character was recast in 2022, now played by Irish actor Olwen Fouéré. (Sally also appeared in 1994’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, but, remember, those movies aren’t considered canon for this new film.)

When we see Sally in the 2022 Texas Chainsaw movie, she is, ironically, working in a slaughterhouse—and this time she’s the one butchering the pig. (It’s ironic because, in the first film, the hitchhiker picked up by Sally and her friends—who turns out to be Leatherface’s brother—talks about his family business: a slaughterhouse.) When Sally gets word that Leatherface is back on a new killing spree,  she comes to Harlow with weapons, hoping to defeat him for good. There’s a moment where she looks at a polaroid picture in her car, which shows the actors from the first film—aka her dead brother and friends.

We don’t learn what Sally has been up to for the last 50 years, besides cutting up pigs, but in an interview for the film’s press notes, producer Fede Álvarez, who has a story-by credit, shared his thoughts on Sally’s backstory: “We didn’t want to reintroduce Sally as someone who’s gone into a mental institution after the events of the first film. We wanted her to get revenge. We think Sally went into law enforcement after surviving the Leatherface attack in the 70s. She threw herself into trying to find him, and spent her whole life doing so, not only for vengeance but for closure.”

There are other connections to the original as way—such as the fact that the production team used the original chainsaw from the 1974 film, when they could. (Foam and plastic replicas were also used.) The voice-over narration that opens the film was done by none other than actor John Larroquette, who also narrated the original film. Many of the scenes in the original took place in sunflower fields, and so the first brutal murder in the 2022 film also takes place in a sunflower field. And, in early the film when Dante goes upstairs in the orphanage for the first time—you may notice a certain somebody sitting in the corner of a wide shot.

Then, of course, there is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre after-credits scene. If you haven’t yet watched the new movie, you’ll want to stop reading this article now.

Spoiler alert: If you wait until the very end of the credits, you’ll get a bonus scene of Leatherface limping down a dirt road with his chainsaw, toward a quaint little farmhouse with a windmill. True Texas Chainsaw fans might recognize that house: It’s Leatherface’s house, aka the early 1900s farmhouse where the first 1974 movie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was filmed. In the original film, Leatherface lived in that house with his brother and their grandpa. Leatherface’s brother was supposedly killed in the first movie. But no one in slashers ever truly dies, right? Does this mean there are more Texas Chainsaw movies to come, featuring a family reunion? We’ll have to wait and see.

Watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Netflix