Plot

After picking up a traumatized young hitchhiker, five friends find themselves stalked and hunted by a deformed chainsaw-wielding loon and his family of equally psychopathic killers.

Driving through the backwoods of Texas, five youths pick up a traumatized hitchhiker, who shoots herself in their van. Shaken by the suicide, the group seeks help from the locals, but their situation becomes even more surreal when they knock on the door of a remote homestead. It's quickly apparent the residents are a family of inbred psychopaths, and the unlucky youths suddenly find themselves running for their lives. In hot pursuit is a disfigured, chainsaw-wielding cannibal known as Leatherface.—Love Hewitt

A group of young adults are on their way to a Lynard Skynard concert in Dallas. They cross through a small, isolated town called Travis County. They pick up a disturbed woman who then shoots herself with a gun. Looking for the local authorities, the group travels through the town, meeting the locals. One by one, they are picked off by a strange man with a demented face. Realizing that they are in mortal danger, they must escape from the town from a family of cannibals and a chainsaw-wielding madman.—ahmetkozan

On August 18th, 1973, in Texas, Erin, her boy-friend Kemper, their friends Andy and Morgan and the hitchhiker Pepper are returning from a vacation in Mexico having been to a Lynnard Skynnard concert. Kemper is driving when a disturbed young woman dangerously wanders onto the road. They decide to help her, and the woman commits suicide inside the vehicle. They decide to look for a telephone to call the Sheriff, and they end in the house of Thomas Hewitt, where their lives are threatened by the sick Leatherface and his deranged family.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In August 1973, a group of teens are driving to Dallas to go to a concert.The teens pick up a hicthhiker who shoots herself, which makes the kids call the local sheriff. The teens come across a madman with a chainsaw, who takes the teens one by one.

In the beginning of the film, there is archive footage of a police search of the Hewitt house. The two officers survey the house and desend into the basement, noting the fingernaill scratch marks, human blood and hair embedded into the walls.

It is August 1973, where five young adults, Erin (Jessica Biel), Kemper (Eric Balfour), Morgan (Jonathan Tucker), Andy (Mike Vogel), and Pepper (Erica Leerhsen), are on their way to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert after coming back from Mexico. As they drive through rural Travis County, Texas, they see a distraught hitchhiker (Lauren German), who eventually gets in their van. After trying to speak to the hitchhiker, who speaks incoherently about a "bad man," she shoots and kills herself with a .357 Magnum pistol.

The group decides to contact the police in which they drive up to a rural country store where the elderly clerk tells them that the sheriff is at the mill. The group drives over to the mill where instead of the sheriff, they find a little boy named Jedediah (David Dorfman) who tells them that the sheriff is drinking at home. Erin and Kemper go through the woods to find his house, leaving the other three at the mill with the boy. They come to a large plantation house where Erin is allowed inside by the owner, an amputee with both of his legs gone, named Monty Hewitt, to phone for help. When Erin finishes, the semi-sinister old man asks her for help, using the opportunity to fondle her without her noticing. Kemper goes inside to look for Erin and is killed with a sledgehammer to the back by Thomas Hewitt, a.k.a.: Leatherface (Andrew Bryniarski), who drags his dead body through a large steel door to the basement.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Hoyt (R. Lee Ermey), a strange-looking policeman, arrives at the mill and disposes of the hitchhiker's body, wrapping her in cellophane and putting her in his trunk and drives away. Erin arrives and finds that Kemper is still missing. Andy and Erin go back to Monty's house, where Erin distracts him while Andy searches for Kemper. Monty realizes Andy is inside and summons Leatherface, who attacks him with his chainsaw. Erin escapes and heads towards the woods, but Leatherface cuts Andy's left leg off as he is running through the back yard. Leatherface carries him to the basement and hangs him on a meat hook with his feet hanging over a piano, where he rubs salt on Andy's stump of a leg before wrapping it in butcher paper and tying it with human hair.

Erin makes it back to the abandoned mill and tries to escape in the van, but Sheriff Hoyt shows up and, after finding marijuana, orders Erin, Morgan and Pepper out of the van. The sheriff gives Morgan the gun he took from the hitchhiker and tells Morgan to reenact how she killed herself. Morgan, scared and disturbed by the sheriff's demeanor, attempts to shoot the sheriff only to find the gun is unloaded. Sheriff Hoyt handcuffs Morgan and takes him to the Hewitt house, leaving the girls in the van where they are attacked by Leatherface. Pepper runs, but is cut in half by Leatherface's chainsaw. Erin also sees that Leatherface is wearing Kemper's face over his own. He begins to chase Erin throught the woods with his large chainsaw buzzing.

During the drive, Sheriff Hoyt continues to taunt Morgan over his well being, and for no reason, smashes a liquor bottle in Morgan's face, knocking a few of his front teeth out. Hoyt pulls out his own set of front false teeth and mentions an intresting story about how he lost them some time back when they arrive at the exact same sinister house. Hoyt drags Morgan out of his squad car, into the house, and to the basement.

Meanwhile, Erin manages to escape from Leatherface and hides in a nearby trailer with two women inside, who offer her tea and try to soothe her. The two women, a morbidly obese middle-aged woman known only as the 'Tea Lady' and a younger woman named Henrietta, whom is presumably her daughter, act strange. After they tell Erin that they don't have a phone for her to call for help, a telephone in the trailer rings and Henrietta picks it up and tells someone on the other end that "she's here". Erin discovers they have kidnapped a child when she sees that the baby with them is the same child in a photograph with the woman who committed suicide earlier in the kid's van. However, the tea is drugged and she passes out when she tries to leave.

Erin wakes up at the Hewitt house surrounded by the entire crazed and murderous Hewitt family: Thomas 'Leatherface' Hewitt; his mother Luda May; Sheriff Hoyt (whom is actually Leatherface's cousin Charlie Hewitt); Monty (Leatherface's uncle); and the little boy Jedediah. Luda May tells Erin that her excuse for her son Thomas's actions, was that her son was tormented by teenagers during his upbringing while working in the closed-down slaughterhouse and that she felt no one cared for her family besides themselves.

Erin is taken to the basement, where she finds Andy. She tries to help him off of the meat hook but when he sees he will land on the piano keys and alert Leatherface, he begs her to kill him, which she does, though suffers severe emotional trauma. She finds Morgan, still handcuffed, and Jedediah leads them out of the house. Jedediah rejects Erin's plea to come with them and distracts Leatherface long enough for them to escape. Erin and Morgan find an abandoned house in the woods and barricade themselves inside. Leatherface breaks in and discovers Erin, but Morgan attacks Leatherface, causing him to drop his chainsaw. Morgan grabs Leatherface and wrestles him, but Leatherface is too heavy and easily lifts Morgan upwards onto a chandelier before releasing him and Morgan gets tangled in the chandelier by his handcuffs. Leatherface picks up his chainsaw and slices up into Morgan's groin, killing him.

Erin runs out of the shack and escapes through the woods. Leatherface trips and cuts his leg while pursuing her. Erin finds a slaughterhouse and hides in a locker. Leatherface opens the locker across from hers and she attacks him with a meat cleaver, and chops off his right arm.

As it begins to rain, Erin runs outside and flags down a trucker, whom she tries to convince to go away from the Hewitt's house, but he stops to find help at the eatery. Erin sees Luda May and watches as Sheriff Hoyt arrives and talks to the trucker. Erin sees Henrietta watching over the kidnapped baby in a highchair. When Henrietta walks outside to join Luda May and Sheriff Hoyt whom are talking to the truck driver, Erin sneaks the baby out of the eatery and hot-wires the sheriff's car before running him over repeatedly until he is dead. Leatherface appears in the road and tries to stop her, but Erin and the baby escape unharmed.

The police archive footage continues to play. The officers inspect the basement noting the hanging meat hooks when suddenly one of the officers is grabbed and severely beaten. A blurred figure viciously shakes the camera and the other police officer is heard screaming. The narrator states that "The crime scene was not properly secured by Travis County Police. Two investigating officers were fatally wounded that day. This is the only known image of Thomas Hewitt, the man they call Leatherface. The case today still remains open".