Winona Ryder in first trailer for Netflix’s Stranger Things

SHE was the “it girl” of the late eighties and nineties until that shoplifting incident. Now she’s up for a big comeback with her new Netflix show.

WINONA Ryder was the “it girl” in the late eighties and throughout the nineties.

She represented a generation disaffected with the world through iconic roles in Heathers and Reality Bites. She was courted by directors such as Tim Burton and Francis Ford Coppola and made films as diverse as Little Women and Girl, Interrupted.

Her fame was the kind that meant her personal life was tabloid fodder, her high-profile romances with the likes of Johnny Depp (Wino Forever) and Matt Damon scrutinised and papped.

But the higher you are, the further you have to fall. And fall she did with a much-publicised 2001 shoplifting incident that essentially derailed her career.

She took a few years off and has been making her way around the indie circuit since then, featuring in projects including Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly and Rebecca Miller’s The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. A cameo in the Star Trek movie and a support role in Black Swan saw her briefly back in the spotlight.

Well, that spotlight is about to be turned on again with her new role in Netflix’s Stranger Things, a supernatural, sci-fi thriller eight-episode series set to debut on July 15.

Stranger Things / Netflix

“Do you like scary movies?”

The trailer dropped today and it’s the first proper glimpse at a series that looks sure to thrill and likely to scare. Her co-stars include David Harbour (The Newsroom, Quantum of Solace) and Matthew Modine (Weeds, Full Metal Jacket).

Stranger Things is set in the 1980s in a small, idyllic town in Indiana that’s turned on its head when a young boy seemingly vanishes into thin air. When his family and friends start to look for him, they step into a web of bizarre happenings, evil government conspiracies (because, let’s face it, have you ever heard of a non-evil government conspiracy?) and supernatural mysteries.

It has the feel of Stephen King and Steven Spielberg rolled into one and visually references the likes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spooky.