The Los Angeles Timess Mark Chalon Smith declared in a 1995 retrospective review: "Freaks is a wild ride, but it's not the monster-trip some say it is. It is macabre and disturbing, but Browning chose to humanize the deformed characters at the movie's shadowy center, not to demonize them." Nonetheless, the film has still been noted for its stark horror imagery in the 21st century, with Joe Morgenstern writing in 2009 that it boasts "some of the most terrifying scenes ever consigned to film." Jamie Russell of the BBC similarly observed in 2002: "It's easy to see why reactions to the film have been so strong—it's a catalogue of the abnormal, the bizarre, and the grotesque that's still as unsettling today as it was 70 years ago." Film critic Mark Kermode awarded the film four out of five stars in a 2015 review, noting that, "today, Browning's sympathies are clear; if there are 'freaks' on display here, they are not the versatile performers to whom the title seems to allude." Film theorist and critic Andrew Sarris echoed this sentiment, proclaiming Freaks "one of the most compassionate films ever made." Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine wrote in a 2003 retrospective that the film's moral significance has often been obscured by critical attention to its more shocking elements, noting that this "seriously underplay[s] the film's blistering humanity and the audacious aesthetic and philosophical lengths to which Browning goes to challenge the way we define beauty and abnormality." , Freaks holds an approval rating of 94% on the internet review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 53 reviews, and boasts an average rating of 8.48/10. Its consensus reads, "Time has been kind to this horror legend: Freaks manages to frighten, shock, and even touch viewers in ways that contemporary viewers missed." Home media Freaks was first issued on LaserDisc by MGM/UA Home Video in 1986, and on VHS by Warner Home Entertainment in 1990. In 2004, Warner issued the film on DVD for the first time. Legacy Freaks is now widely considered among director Browning's best films. The film's growing esteem among critics traces back to the early 1960s, when it was rediscovered as a counterculture cult film, particularly among European audiences. It was screened at the 1962 Venice Film Festival, and shortly after was shown for the first time in the United Kingdom, having been banned there since 1932. Throughout the 1970s and