Taking a side street at Shirō's request, Tamura hits and kills yakuza gang leader, Kyōichi.

Shirō arrives there and meets the other residents of the community, including a painter, Ensai, who is wanted for a crime in another city and is painting a portrait of Hell; a former reporter, Akagawa; a corrupt detective, Hariya; the community doctor, Dr. Kasuma; and Sachiko, a nurse and Ensai's daughter, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Yukiko.

Tamura appears and reveals that each resident has some complicity in a murder: Mr. Yajima caused the death of a fellow soldier during a war; both Hariya and Akagawa framed or slandered innocent men who then both died by suicide; and Dr. Kasuma knowingly misdiagnosed Ito's condition.

Shirō returns in time for the community's tenth anniversary party, where Gōzō has allowed cheap, rancid fish to be served to the residents.

As the partiers descend into insobriety, Mr. and Mrs. Yajima kill themselves by leaping in front of a train, and Gōzō's mistress falls to her death after an altercation.

Having sent the baby girl, whom she names Harumi, floating away on the Sanzu River, Yukiko begs Shirō to save the child.

While caught in a vortex of damned souls, Shirō finds his baby daughter helplessly rotating on a large wheel.

In the realm of the living, everyone at the party is dead, including Ensai, who has hanged himself after completing his portrait of Hell and setting it on fire.

Nobuo Nakagawa asked Ichirō Miyagawa to write the script, which was originally supposed to be called Heaven and Hell, under order of producer Mitsugu Okura.

Dennis Schwartz from Ozus' World Movie Reviews awarded the film a grade "A", calling it "[a] disquieting morality tale based upon the Buddhist concept of an afterlife".

[10] In an essay for the Criterion Collection, Chuck Stephens wrote, "Overflowing with brackish ponds of bubbling pus, brain-rattling disjunctions of sound and image, and at times almost dauntingly incomprehensible plot twists and eye-assaulting bouts of brutish montage, Jigoku is more than merely a boundary-pummeling classic of the horror genre—it’s as lurid a study of sin without salvation as the silver screen has ever seen.

Gallman praised the film's performances, eerie score, Nakagawa’s direction, and "vivid color palette".