SEO question

Alright i know that having and EMD is great for keyword traffic, but im wondering about something a little different.

Lets say i have a movie site, but in the site i have a few pages dedicated to lets say comedy movies. If i use SB, or anything and build links with comedy movies as anchor, going to the main domain + the pages, will i still have a good chance to rank for that keyword as well?

Sorry if its a horrible question still kind of new to SEO.

The above is just an example, i would be targeting some keywords with around 10k monthly searchs as a secondary keyword

You can rank for anything without EMD, EMD is like a free push, or it's like having some free invisible links. You just have to out work the EMD.
EMD are only valuable if used properly.

so with proper onsite SEO and backlinking i can rank just as well for terms?

Your thoughts is great. Hope it will be effective to the seo work.